Cigar Daisey oral history transcript

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RECORDING OF VIDEO TAPED INTERVIEW
WITH CIGAR DAISEY MARCH 23, 1989
BY DAVE HALL
ALSO, COMMENTS BY CLARENCE MCKENNEY
AND GEORGE LAYCOCK, OTHERS UNIDENTIFIED
MR. DAISEY: …and they started draining the glades, see? They dug ditches right down
through the center of this island. They drained out them breakwater glades. They did the
same thing with any low place, they dug a ditch out. That was the beginning of hurting
the island, you know. But, those ditches that they dug out filled up in later years. And
then, along come the tourists. When the tourists come the skeeters [mosquitoes] would
bite on of them once in a while. They weren’t about to put up with that. It was all right
for them to eat up the native people. But you can’t bite them tourists. Then, they dug
‘em out again. Where were we again on the…?
MR. HALL: When you were a little boy how did the people live?
MR. DAISEY: The people lived tough. I mean, nobody had nuthin. I don’t know of
anybody that had anything. I lived with an old lady. She wasn’t my aunt, but she was
my aunt. She married my uncle. He died, and I lived with her. My mother was still
living I just didn’t live at home with her.
MR. HALL: Was your daddy a trapper and a hunter?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah.
MR. HALL: What was your daddy’s name?
MR. DAISEY: Herbert.
MR. HALL: Herbert Daisey.
MR. HALL: Yeah. He trapped a little bit. And he raised poultry. He went in the
poultry business in the 1930s, about ’34 or ’35. At one time he had about a million
capacity or more three time a year, of poultry. That was the only industry there was
other than seafood. But the [unintelligible] system destroyed that. The feed man and the
chicken man. Before you knowed it they owned it all, and the poor man got kicked out of
that.
MR. HALL: When did you first start hunting?
MR. DAISEY: Dave, I was so little, I don’t know. All I can tell you is this; the big deal
was to foller after the bigger boys in the glades. We’d go to Dave Metterin’s Country
Store, old county store. You could by three shells for ten cents. Monarchs, I can see ‘em
right plain in the box. You’d get three of ‘em for ten cents. The boys would take an old
double-barreled gun, buy ‘em three shells and go for the glade. And the little boys like me
would foller behind him, you know what I mean? That’s the first of me hunting. So little
it was pitiful. Then the day come, I want to shoot. I was so small, it would kick. If the
big boys would let you shoot once in a while, you’d get the hell kicked out of you. You
know what I mean? That was a big deal you know. No body could knock you down. I
remember the first [sounds like] yellow legs I ever shot. I shot them with a four hundred
and ten. I killed three, first shot. I kilt some muskrats and sold the fur and bought this
gun for nine dollars. The first time a shot her, I killed three yeller legs and I never did kill
three with her from that day since. That was good to kill three at one time. I guess I
lucked out with that first shot. See? We’d go back in them glades right there in the middle
of this island and shoot yeller legs all day long. You could just hunt out in that glade like
you wouldn’t believe, all day long. Even in the spring, Blue Winged Teal was in there.
We’d shoot Blue Winged Teal you know.
MR. HALL: What does duck hunting, and being in this marsh mean to you?
MR. DAISEY: Well, it was a way of life, trapping and hunting and fishing. You might
say it was my boyhood dreams. I mean, that’s all I thought about. I’d go to sleep at
night and the last thing you could see was the hunting and trapping and fishing. That was
the only thing we minded. I will say today, in all fairness, that I’ve done exactly, I
fulfilled, in other words, I’ve done it that much where it really don’t mean that much to
me any more. I am satisfied.
MR. HALL: But you want to help make it better?
MR. DAISEY: I’d like to see ducks for everybody, for my grand younguns, for
younguns in the future. I’d like to see everybody still be able to go duck hunting
whenever they wanted to. With reasonable laws, and a reasonable limit. I believe it can
still be done. But I believe you’ve got to make some tough choices when it comes to
progress. I was born a Democrat under Roosevelt, I guess. That’s all I know. I staid that
way ‘til Lyndon Johnson. And After Lyndon Johnson, I become a Republican. But let
me tell you somethin’, the last eight years they ain’t done a damn thing, as far as I’m
concerned for the environment! The Republicans haven’t. That’s the way I feel about it.
I think they’ve let us down there. Anything concerning progress, I think they say go
ahead and do it.
MR. HALL: What is progress?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I think it’s something that you do slowly, and you don’t feel it all
at one time. You know? It’s going to happen. We know it’s going to happen. I don’t
think you can stop it completely. But I think you’ve just got to slow down to the point
where a little change takes place, and not no real abrupt one. If it does, why, I think
that’s why all the hellfire is. [?] And you have to change people’s way of life too, when
you do that. The whole way of life changes. Recently, they passed a law around here
where they won’t let ‘em drag no more with their boats in the inside limit. I think that’s
wrong. Because they’re gonna drag ‘em in North Carolina. And boys really wasn’t
catching that many fish. It’s the same thing with fish laws and duck laws. It’s all the
same. The people that makes ‘em ninety percent of the time really don’t know what the
hell they’re doing. I don’t know what the answer to it is. I mean, ain’t many people
want to be a politician anymore anyway. Enough people looks down on ‘em.
MR. HALL: How do you feel about the fact the government and wildlife organizations
need to be talking more to the people? More communications?
MR. DAISEY: I think that that’s the most important thing that they could do. Is to
have better relations with the public. But, if it means satisfying the public, like for
instance this refuge, if it means they’ve got to be buddy-buddy with these, first thing
they do with a man that comes here it try to get next to him. The local business people
on this island. There may be fifteen of ‘em on this island. They try to get close to him,
be good friends with him. They want to sway him for the things that they want the use
of this refuge. That is not the kind of public relations I am interested in. This refuge
belongs to everybody, these two hundred and thirty or fifty million people that live in
this country. It belongs to everybody. It don’t belong to the fifteen business people on
Chincoteague Island. As far as I’m concerned, they ought not to have that damned much
to say about it.
MR. HALL: What about the ducks?
MR. DAISEY: What do you mean?
MR. HALL: How do they fit in to all of this?
MR. DAISEY: Well, the ducks has been…we just casted them aside. We’ve not
considered the ducks. I mean, uh, if you spend your money chasin’ tourists up and
down, for feeding and all that kind of stuff, you certainly ain’t spendin’ it on ducks.
There’s things could be done, improvements. But one part of the government is against
the other part of the government like for instance, impoundments, you understand that.
Many things can be done. You can plant a lot of duck food to make duck fat and healthy
so when you leave everything’s in good shape when you go back. There’s so many
things that they could do. But all the money’s spent on tourists. That’s the only thing
they got goin’ on.
MR. HALL: Cigar, tell me in your own words important wetlands and the heritage of
ducks, not only to this island here, in other words, how important is this to the American
people of the future?
MR. DAISEY: I think it’s the whole background of the whole country. I mean, it is
America. It’s the only…our duck hunting was unique. It didn’t happen, I mean decoys
and things like that didn’t happen in other countries like it did here. Hunting was a way
of life I guess. Fur trappin’ and is just about as old next to prostitution I guess. It’s a
way of life, and it’s slowly been destroyed through progress. And I don’t think violation
is a big deal. There’s been a lot of violations. But you know yourself that if ducks don’t
have a place to nest and rest, you ain’t got no ducks. Now, [unintelligible] said, I read an
article by him in Sports Afield magazine. He said ‘water didn’t mean ducks.’ But I
disagree with [sounds like] Mr. Wright.
MR. HALL: That means ducks, if you don’t have breeding ducks. That’s what he’s
saying. If you don’t have any breeders…
MR. DAISEY: Well, we’re gonna have a few breeding ducks. We’re always gonna have a
few anyway. But that water, I think, is what we better concentrate on more than any one
thing.
MR. HALL: Yeah, but what he’s saying is that there’s areas in Canada that I am familiar
with that have had good water and there’s no breeding ducks on it. You look out, I’m
going to tell you, the worst disaster in my life was when I moved from the Mississippi
Flyway to the Atlantic Flyway. Heck, you hadn’t had any ducks up here in two hundred
years! Compared to what I know to be ducks.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
MR. HALL: When I came up here to the Chesapeake Bay, and what I saw, I said, “My
God, they don’t have any ducks up here!” And you now, you know that we will more
ducks in Louisiana every year than winter in the entire Atlantic Flyway?
MR. DAISEY: I don’t doubt it.
MR. HALL: And what bothers me is that now it’s gotten to where they want to start
releasing Mallards. What do you think of that?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I don’t know of no alternative. I don’t know what else you can do.
I don’t know if for instance, if this year Mother Nature is cruel to you again, what are
you going to do? Are you gonna have a season next year? I don’t think you should have
a season. I think you should close it for a year or two and try it out. But I’m scared if
you close it it will never open again like they done to shore birds. The “antis” [people
against hunting] will put so much pressure on you it’ll never be open again. So, I am real
frustrated and mixed up too, about what’s best. I think that you may have to sooner or
later go to the Mallard. You may just have to have a Mallard season for a number of
years.
MR. HALL: But they shouldn’t be able to shoot the so-called other wild ducks claiming
that that’s part of their…
MR. DAISEY: Oh no. No, I think if you go to the Mallard, I think you better shoot the
Mallard, the ones that you raised. And just let it go at that. That’s what they do in
Europe don’t they? Don’t they raise a lot of birds? Don’t they got a system?
MR. HALL: Well how do you feel about that? You know, the local people here, you’ve
felt on this island that hunting was a God given right. It was a privilege that should be
enjoyed by all the people. How do you feel about just a few, select people being able to
hunt?
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s the way it will eventually amount to, and I’ll tell you why I
say that; we never had no deer til about 1960 on the mainland. That was the beginning of
the deer. And now we got oodles of ‘em. And now, I good go over there hunting,
anywhere I want to, no Posted signs. Now, it’s Posted, and rented to somebody from
New Jersey. The pulp and paper company, they rent all the earth to the people from
New Jersey. The local people get shut right out. They take it over. There’s really no
place in the State of Virginia, on Accomack County where you can go hunt on the
mainland where the deer are but what somebody don’t own. So there again, you create a
violation situation. You see a big old buck in somebody’s field, you shoot him anyway,
the hell with him. You know, you just go ahead and shoot him. Then you’ve violated the
law, see? It’s hard, and it seems like the state is worse than the federal government when
it comes to Wardens and the way they run things. I mean, if they can’t get you for, if
they come to you for hunting and you weren’t hunting, they’ll get you for a hole in your
life preserver or something else. You know what I mean? Some damn thing, that little
teeny old thing that don’t really matter to a whole hell of a lot, as far as I’m concerned.
MR. HALL: What do you thing about having more simple laws?
MR. DAISEY: I think they should be simple, real simple, with the limits spelled out so
it won’t be no mistakes. And like you say, if you catch a man and he’s what you call a
real; there’s a real difference in a man that makes a mistake and a real violator. I think the
law pretty well can tell the difference. If you do want to take a man’s license, do it. But
don’t hand a man a little teeny old fine for a little teeny old thing that don’t amount to a
damn. I mean, really, it’s just an inconvenience to you cause you’ve got to appear agin
him if he don’t send it in.
MR. HALL: Please identify yourself again.
MR. DAISEY: My name is Delbert L. Daisey. I live in Chincoteague my entire lifetime.
MR. HALL: Where is that?
MR. DAISEY: It’s a little island off the coast of Virginia, where a lot of greedy people
live. A lot of greedy business people live here.
MR. HALL: How come you talk the way you do Cigar?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I tell it like a see it.
MR. HALL: I am talking about your accent. Where did that come from?
MR. DAISEY: God only knows. I really don’t know. You see? When I went to school
if you talked proper, people would make fun at you. They would say, ‘he’s getting to be
a smart ass!’ That was the way people did. So, you talk like they did I guess. You took
to talking like they did.
MR. HALL: Now on this island, when I lived here, they had different little groups and
cliques. They had [sounds like] “snotty ridge” and they had “deep hole”.
MR. DAISEY: I was raised on snotty ridge. I was raised down on snotty ridge, right
next to the water. Yep. It’s so much difference that I can’t sit here and explain it to you
see? The way this island once was, and the way it is today. And I look for it to be worse
tomorrow. See, the more people that they allow on that refuge…to start with, the Park
Service should never’ve been on there. The Park Service should’ve never been on there
because all they dream about is tourists. When I am over there predator trapping, they
got a little place down here, I [don’t] dare from getting anywhere close to that, trapping
because its against the law to set a trap on Park Service property. When I come to the
Maryland line that barbed wire fence, I have to stop. It’s Park Service from there on. It’s
barbed wire fence from there on. What’s going to stop coons and foxes from coming on
underneath there? Coming on down the beach? It’s a big joke! The way we do things,
it’s a big joke. I don’t know how you’d cure all these things.
MR. HALL: You’ve done real well carving these decoys.
MR. DAISEY: Oh, that’s just how I make a small living, carving decoys.
MR. HALL: You survive though?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, I make a small, surviving living.
MR. HALL: But that ties into the ducks again.
MR. DAISEY: Oh yeah. I still feel I’m close to the ducks, you know what I mean?
From making things and going to the shows and judging and what have you. I really enjoy
it. And I’m too damn old to do anything else now, but do some artwork.
MR. HALL: You can’t run from the game wardens anymore, anyway!
MR. DAISEY: I sure as hell can’t, ain’t even gonna try runnin’ from him. ‘Cause I ain’t
gonna do nothin’ wrong. Ain’t no need to try and run, ‘cause I can’t do nuthin’ anyway!
MR. HALL: Tell me what was going through your mind, say, when you and Newman
would load up at ten o’clock at night and make a run up the island. What was going
through your mind? What were you doing that for? Of all the things, as you look back
now, why did you do that?
MR. DAISEY: For whatever the intended purposes were. I mean, if we was going deer
hunting, we went deer hunting. And we just didn’t…we figured we wouldn’t see nobody,
won’t nobody to bother us, and nobody would know about it. And we accomplished
what we set out to do without having any problems.
MR. HALL: If you were going to do night gunning ducks, you…?
MR. DAISEY: The same way.
MR. HALL: You’d night gun ducks. Well tell me about that. I mean, what… I am
looking for…was it a thrill there, to beat the system?
MR. DAISEY: I think it might have been in the latter years. But in the beginning it
wasn’t.
MR. HALL: Tell me, you talk about beating the system however you want to put it.
Just talk about that and how you felt.
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would say in the very beginning you didn’t know nothing about
the system. You really wasn’t out to beat nobody. But when they send fifteen or
twenty game wardens in here on me fifteen or twenty times. And I knew that I couldn’t
beat it so the only sensible thing for me to do would be to just close right down til they
left. See? That’s what I would do. I would close down. I figured that just they minute
they left and went away, I go back trapping again, see? Because I knew I couldn’t…there
wasn’t no need to keep going while they were here. One on one they’ll getcha. They’ll
getcha like that. If you take one game warden and forty or fifty people, he’s got a hell of
a job to keep up with you. There ain’t no way he can… You have so very few law
enforcement officers. I’ve seen, I’ve been checked three or four times, say, in fifty years.
In fifty years, I’ve been checked three or four times. So we’ve not really had it that bad
around here.
MR. HALL: How many times do you reckon in your life you’ve violated the waterfowl
laws?
MR. DAISEY: I violated it two or three times a day, from the first frost ‘til March I’d
say. Two or three times a day.
MR. HALL: How many times were you caught and convicted?
MR. DAISEY: I was never caught neither time, but I was convicted once. I paid a
$75.00 fine in 1953 I believe it was…’52. [sounds like] Ralph Harrison turned me too.
Chased me in a airplane all day long. And he carried me to court. They had my trial.
Never give me no chance, I had no lawyer. On Saturday evening… Today, they’d run
you out of the courthouse if you came around with a case like that. He charged me for
endangering government property ‘cause I run from him. Possession of migratory game
birds, he never seen a durn one I had. I only had one, and the damn [unintelligible] got
him. So, he certainly didn’t see him. And carrying a concealed weapon, I had a pocket
knife in my pocket. It was over a three inch blade. Then I had a trappers permit the
season went out on the 15th of March or something like that. So I had the right to have
that really.
MR. HALL: Tell me about the feeling when you were trying to use your skills to outdo
the game wardens. Was that part of the reason that you, in the later years….?
MR. DAISEY: I went to a lot of trouble. I went to a lot of trouble. In other words, I’d
always, …a red fox and smart, but he’d scared. And I was scared he would get me. I
kept that in mind. I always said that you could get me if you do it right. And I always
figured when I went to a trap where you would be, when I picked out a place where I was
going to trap, I always figured that…here’s a think little place over here, and here’s where
I’m gonna look for you to be when I come here.
MR. HALL: Looking for the game warden?
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. I always figured out these places so that I would have the
edge. I wanted all the edge I could get. For years and years they never had no big motors.
Then along about 1960, they started buying them great big motors, and boats you know.
They could run you down then. It were different. They just figured their mind up that
they were going to break it up and they done it.
MR. HALL: But they didn’t break up the sport hunting violations?
MR. DAISEY: No. The sport hunting violations, the law would be some of it. But I
don’t think it’s as bad as what people think. I don’t think it’s really that serious.
MR. HALL: There’s not enough ducks.
MR. DAISEY: No! Most people don’t even get a shot to start with, when they go any
more, unless it’s one of them good days.
MR. HALL: The Atlantic Flyway is in real trouble when it comes to the numbers of
ducks.
MR. DAISEY: I would say so. I would say it’s… As a matter of fact, there used to be
black ducks all the way down this peninsula, seventy miles of it. And there was some
hot spots where they’d be so thick it was pitiful. You go in them areas today, and you
won’t find any.
MR. HALL: I want to ask you about the importance of the hunters today, because the
ducks are so scarce. It’s important that the hunters today, obey the laws. It used to not
make that much difference if the guys went out there and shot lots of ducks, baited the
whole lot and shot all of them, it probably didn’t make as much difference. But today,
with as few ducks as there are, if the sportsmen; one of the things they can do including
the habitat.. is to have reasonable simple regulations and the sportsmen should obey
them. In other words, you wouldn’t go out there and disobey the laws now?
MR. DAISEY: No, I wouldn’t go out there today and shoot a sack full of ducks. I
definitely wouldn’t. I think it’s wrong. I see nothing wrong if a man goes killing a mess if
he’s got a big family. If he kills one or two more than he ought to, or something like that.
I’m not going to frown on that. I’m not frowning on the way the Indian hunted all across
this country. If you hunt like that. I am more in favor of the Indian hunter than I am the
sport hunter. Like I want a deer, I’ll go kill me a deer and I’ll eat that deer. And when
he’s gone, and I want me another one, I’d go kill me another one, and I’d eat that deer. I
don’t really frown on that. Waste, just for sport…[feels it’s bad]
MR. HALL: What you do say when you talk to the sports? What would like to tell
them about obeying the laws?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would say that you should do as good as you can. I mean, if you
are tempted to shoot over the limit, why, I think you should stay out of an area where
there is a one duck limit. Like with black ducks and things like that. It would be awful
easy to make a mistake, shoot two ducks. Nowadays black ducks and mallard are all
mixed up. What do you call a black duck, Dave?
MR. HALL: I want to get back to the mentality of a guy, when he goes out there, wants
to obey the law, do you think that that’s important today?
MR. DAISEY: Yes, I do think it’s important.
MR. HALL: Tell me that in your own words. See? I don’t want to be in this interview.
I want you talking.
MR. DAISEY: Well I think anybody goes hunting should obey the laws really. And I
think if you’re gonna have this hunt, I think it ought to be done…you ought to have a
little but more limits that what you got. Or, you ought to close it, one or the other.
Because you’ve got a man…he can easily get carried away with it. Look, you know
yourself, if you like duck hunting and you shoot one, and another one coming out to you,
it’s hard as hell not to shoot the other one. You’re really up agin it. You’ve got to have a
lot of will power. So, as far as going out and killing forty and fifty ducks or something
like that, man should be prosecuted for that, no doubt about that. That’s just too damn
many, this day and time. I agreed with you. I don’t think that happens much any more.
MR. HALL: Well, it can’t up here. It does down our way. We get guys that kill two
hundred a day!
MR. DAISEY: Well, you ought to take him damn license and you wouldn’t have to
worry about it.
MR. HALL: Last year it didn’t happen because we hit ‘em hard in the news media.
Now the lawyers and doctors are talking about, they did it but they shouldn’t do it any
more. That’s what we’re trying to do. If we’re going to have hunting, we’re going to
have the hunter obey the rules. And they have to do it because the want to. What do
you say about…there’ll never be enough game wardens. You told me you hunted illegally
every day and you never really got caught, and you only got checked three times. So
there’s never going to be enough game wardens. What do you say about that?
MR. DAISEY: You can’t have enough game wardens. But they could be seen a little bit
more. That would help. In other words, if man rides through there in a boat and he sees
the Fish and Wildlife man, there won’t be no game violations happening around in that
area. That would keep ‘em honest, just the sight of them.
MR. HALL: They need to be in the field more.
MR. DAISEY: They don’t do nothing else but take a car and a boat and ride around this
island. They say, “hey, I saw the game warden, you’d better look out!” See? It will
stop him. It will keep you honest. This duck situation is complicated because the
progress is destroying us and like you said, the hunter’s not done his part either. In a lot
of ways he’s not done his part.
MR. HALL: He’s done his part in putting up his money to buy land to support those
things, but as far as obeying the rules, he’s not really thought it that wrong.
MR. DAISEY: No. That’s true, he don’t really think it’s that wrong.
MR. HALL: Getting back to when you were sport guiding out there; Did any
hunters…tell me what happened in the blind. Did they ever talk about how they ought to
obey the rules here? Or, we should never shoot over the limit. Did you ever hear
anybody saying that?
MR. DAISEY: The only person that I would hear, would tell you off hand, that “lord,
we don’t want to violate no laws,” would be the newspaperman, the sports writer. It
was his job. It meant is job.
MR. HALL: You guided…who did you guide?
MR. DAISEY: I guided men like from the Baltimore Sun, what was his name, Bill
Burton? Bertchet. Different ones. Some of them are passed on, long since passed on I
know now. Anyway, a lot of good men. They didn’t violate the law. They did not do it.
I occasionally find…
MR. HALL: Who was the ones that would do it?
MR. DAISEY: The younger people.
MR. HALL: Would they be professionals, doctors, lawyers?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, they would be. It didn’t make any difference as far as the
education of the people. I don’t think that makes any difference. Most people, they
look at it this way; they maybe get to go one or two times a year. So what the hell? I
ain’t going every day to kill two or three ducks. So I’ll kill maybe eight on ten today, and
won’t go no more this year. That’s the way a lot of people figure. I’ve heard a lot of
people say if you give ‘em spring shell ducking season they’d pay $25.00 for to go shell
ducking in the spring and to hell with the rest of the duck season. How’s that sound to
do? We know never get to shoot these [sounds like] merganders. People, a lot of them
would ten times rather shoot them than to shoot a duck, you know.
MR. HALL: And down in Louisiana, they wouldn’t even bother to waste a shell on ‘em.
They’ve got a lot of them. But up here they eat them don’t they?
MR. DAISEY: You’ve better believe it. And you’d better believe that you could sell
license at just about any price you wanted, the Division of Wildlife could, on mergander
hunting. Myself, I would be willing to hunt no duck of no kind, and just shoot mergander
in the spring of the year. I would go for that.
MR. HALL: Why is that? Do you like to eat them?
MR. DAISEY: Well, not necessarily like to eat him, but he’s sporty, and he’s purdy.
And I’m not goin’ to shoot that many of them no way, four or five of them, you know.
Being as I don’t get to do any of it at all, I probably would enjoy that…listen, there’s
nothing in the world easier to kill than a black duck coming to you. A black duck, or a
mallard is the easiest thing in the world I know to kill. I know, I’ve shot enough of them
in my lifetime. I am satisfied it I don’t…maybe to get one or two to eat or something like
that. But that’s about all I want from now on.
MR. HALL: Is Dave Daisey’s grave on Assateague?
MR. DAISEY: I don’t know where it is, to tell you the truth. I don’t know.
MR. HALL: Is that old cemetery still over there?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, it’s an old cemetery in Bill Scott’s yard, but I don’t know whose
buried there. You can’t really tell.
MR. HALL: Well tell me some of the other old families that are native to Chincoteague.
MR. DAISEY: Well, there’s so many on them, I don’t really know who the oldest ones
are. To tell you the truth, I don’t know who the oldest families is on here. I know the
Daiseys have been here, the Thorntons, Burches. I tell you where the Burches come
from…they were probably one of the oldest families. They come from North Beach.
They set them ashore down at North Beach off of one of them ships probably 1700 or
something. They went ashore there and put up a salt works. Right there in Green Run
woods. That was probably the oldest family there is. They called them ‘up the beach
Burches’ because they come from up the beach. That’s what they used to call them.
MR. HALL: How important was ducking hunting to all of the people on the island?
MR. DAISEY: It was a way of life. It was a way of food, a way to make some money.
It was just part of living in a vicinity like this. It was a big help to them people. It’d give
you something to eat on Sunday.
[Mr. Hall changes videotapes, and tells Mr. Daisey what the plan is for going over to the
island, for more of his visit and for working on editing the taped interview contents.]
MR. DAISEY: Cut all the bad things out! If I get too hard on the Fish and Wildlife, cut
it out.
MR. HALL: I’m not going to put you in any position. Other than the fact that
progress…you’re absolutely right, see, you know more about, as a lay person about
what’s going on in this world; living on this little bitty island, almost isolated than most
of them goddamned people in Washington, D.C. know about, who’s supposed to be
running this country!
Side B, tape 1
MR. HALL: I’m just going let you guys sit there and talk.
[two new people join conversation, Mr. Clarence McKenney and Mr. George Laycock]
MR. MCKENNEY: …that program didn’t cost the government anything either. We
furnished the pickup truck, and gasoline and everything anyway didn’t we?
MR. DAISEY: We furnished the whole works.
MR HALL: This is a friend of mine. His name is George Laycock. He’s a writer. He’s
written lots of books. He just gave me a book this morning.
MR. DAISEY: I believe I’ve seen some of your books!
MR. HALL: He’s written about mountain men, and bears and everything.
MR. LAYCOCK: I am a field editor for Audubon Magazine too. That’s one of the
things I do.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, the name sounds familiar.
MR. HALL: He and I have been running mates for a long time.
MR. DAISEY: How about this Audubon deal…Audubon’s come out on record about
this refuge? You know all about that I’m sure.
MR. LAYCOCK: Well, I don’t know all about it. I remember reading it.
MR. DAISEY: They mentioned Kestrel and this one and different ones all up and down
was real endangered. I’d like to know a little bit more about their opinions. How would
you find out? Would you write them?
MR. LAYCOCK: Yeah. They have regional representatives, people who work this area.
I am in New York. I can give you the address.
MR. MCKENNEY: You know, we’re probably more fortunate than a lot of people are
in a lot of these states. We still have quite a bit of marshland, especially here on this
Eastern Shore between the sea side and the Bay side both.
MR. DAISEY: We got all the marshland, but we got no mainland.
MR HALL: We’ve got to get you guys to come down to Louisiana and spend about a
week with me down in the marsh. I’d like for you to see that. I mean, we’re losing it
down there fast. It’s pitiful. But it’s so big, still, for you to comprehend, being a marsh
person, you’d just be staggered at how much there is and we’re losing it. Aw, it’s just
pitiful! The damn coastal erosion is just eating our lunch for us.
MR. DAISEY: It’s just eroding the coast from the Gulf?
MR. HALL: Yeah, the damn salt intrusion and natural subsidents, all kinds of problems.
MR. DAISEY: Well, did it have anything to do with the oil companies?
MR. HALL: Oh yeah, they have a lot to do with it. It seems like if you talk about
progress, this was so short lifed, as far as what good it did for the people, the harm that
it’s going to do to the seafood industry, and to the culture and the way of life, people
aren’t even going to be able to live in southern Louisiana in the next fifty years.
MR. DAISEY: It always seems that you get something and as soon as you do you want
some more.
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s the same way here.
MR. HALL: I mean, they’re going to be under water. There ain’t going to be anything.
We’re losing forty square miles of marsh a year.
MR. MCKENNEY: Good God! The oil companies don’t give a damn about anything.
MR. LAYCOCK: The old companies have no conscience on that. They don’t care about
fifty years from now. We’ve got some of that on a small scale here, with some of our,
whatever you want to call them. They have just gotten busy starting up a few dollars,
now they can’t get enough.
MR: DAISEY: That’s what I’m talking about, about progress. That’s what does it.
Take two or three men or a few.
MR. LAYCOCK: You said the same thing happened down at Harker’s Island didn’t it?
MR: DAISEY: That’s what I was telling just now; (unintelligible) was five miles long,
but I’ve seen what happened there.
MR. LAYCOCK: Well, personally I certainly agree with what you were saying about
the over use of these refuges by people who don’t go because the wildlife is there. They
go because the sun is there, or the sand is there, or they want to get away from the cities
or whatever.
MR. MCKENNEY: I big problem we had when we were over there trapping was
keeping damn people out of our traps. You know, they were in areas where they really
weren’t supposed to be.
MR. DAISEY: We were with the Manager and the Manager would have to drive them
out. One or two times we’d ride up there with him and here they’d be. He said, “You
know you ain’t belong to be up here! Leave, go that way!” It won’t be long before they
send our way!
MR. MCKENNEY: We trapped over there more or less, nothing illegal. Just keep the
general public [out]. They see a trap, or a leg-hole trap, they go crazy. They think it
shouldn’t be on a refuge. We tried to keep it quiet.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. That’s what I had to do. I had to hide my traps. I had to
stay away from the people, and not let them see no animals. I had one man see one
animal, didn’t we?
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, some fellow was there with a camera.
MR. DAISEY: He was there with a damn camera, taking pictures of that animal. That
was the only one we seen. Being as I had trapped it illegal all of my life, I was used to it.
Used to trying to stay away from people, see? It worked out pretty good.
MR. MCKENNEY: I don’t think they ever had any complaints on it, unless it was one
or two local people who thought they ought to be there instead of us, you know. I think
that’s the only real complaint they ever had on it. But we kept it quiet. We figured it
would be, well; we didn’t want Dennis to get in any trouble especially.
MR. DAISEY: No, we didn’t want nobody to get in any trouble.
MR. MCKENNEY: …over the trapping deal. I know one thing, it’d do a hell of a lot of
good for that refuge as far as raising fowl, if they’d get some water over there.
MR. HALL: That’s right.
MR. DAISEY: Hey, what’d you hear they get when they poisoned them foxes that
time? Your dog got killed didn’t he? Didn’t he get poisoned or something?
MR. HALL: Ooh! Goddamn we got in all kind of trouble!
MR. DAISEY: Did you?
MR. HALL: We weren’t supposed to have done it. I killed my own dog what that
goddamned stuff, my Lab. There was one little piece of it underneath the deep freeze
there in the office. My dog got it. I realized as soon as I saw it that that dog was done
for. Before I could get him to the Vet he was gone.
MR. DAISEY: That ball [of poison] shouldn’t have been there. Your people making
them balls. They shouldn’t have been making them.
MR. LAYCOCK: Were they spreading poisoned bait?
MR. HALL: They were putting them out of airplanes.
MR. DAISEY: See?
MR. HALL: I can tell you what we did. The next year we produced three thousand
ducks on that refuge. That’s what we were doing.
MR. MCKENNEY: I found a lot of foxes up there around where we hunted up there at
Billy Goat Cove, and them places.
MR. DAISEY: It still can be done today. It can be done, but not like they done it, see?
What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to go down there and dig a little hole, get the fox to
come in to that hole, like a regular sent station. Get him coming there regularly, then you
go there at the last minute and put your little ball [poison] there. Well, he’d dead. And
you keep enough places like that, you kill them, every damn one and nobody knows
what’s happening.
MR. HALL: The way we got in trouble was that we did it without having the damn
approval. It didn’t make any difference if that we were doing what was right for the
ducks. We knew that the way the bureaucracy operated, if we asked for permission,
they’d never let us do it!
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would be opposed to doing it like that. I tell you why I be
opposed to doing it like that; flying over there and dropping it, or just throwing them out
around everywhere. It was because it was possible that the birds of prey could get one of
them.
MR. HALL: We killed a few seagulls, but that was the only birds that we killed.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well, they need some killing.
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, if you killed every damn one of them, it’d be a good deal? I told
the Regional Director here one day, or at the other place; I was gonna get every damn one
I met up with. I despise them!
MR. MCKENNEY: We watched them wipe out a whole load of Marsh Hens one day
didn’t we? We declared war on them!
MR. DAISEY: We were sitting down drinking a beer one day and it was thirteen Marsh
Hens. In two or three days time they had them down to one. They eat every damn one
of them Marsh Hens! I said, “One of these days, goddamn if we don’t get them. So we
got us a heap of shells, and we got full of beer and we got a big old chair sitting back there.
And damn if we didn’t smoke them big old herring gulls. We give them a shooting to go
away from home!
MR. MCKENNEY: They stayed away from there for a while didn’t they?!
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe they did. Some man, a bird watcher lived two or
three houses down below here. He said he didn’t know what in the hell was going on over
there. He said that all he seen was a gull falling out the air every time he looked!
MR. MCKENNEY: He said, “I knew there was a good reason for you boys to be
shooting them gulls, but I couldn’t figure out what it was!” [Laughing]
MR. DAISEY: I told him, “I am goddamned mad at those sons of bitches, they eat that
whole damn bunch of Marsh Hens, every last one of then!”
MR. MCKENNEY: Boy, they did! Ate ‘em right out! And that mother hen would go
right for ‘em. They pass and the little ones would dive, and she’d go right for ‘em but
they didn’t pay no attention to her.
MR. DAISEY: I despise them damned old herring gulls!
MR: LAYCOCK: There’s too darned many of them.
MR. DAISEY: There’s something else that’s got to be done! See? There’s the President
right there, or the Fish and Wildlife, ain’t nobody coming out or saying nothing about it.
Why don’t they take him off the protected list? He’s protected ain’t he Dave?
MR. HALL: Yep. If we did that the damn people would go out there and just shoot ‘em
for the hell of it.
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s what we want! We want to shoot ‘em for the hell of it! [All
laugh].
MR. MCKENNEY: Big bird would cut them down some, the gulls would.
MR. DAISEY: Well look! The Regional Director told me they bust their eggs up there in
Maine, and what’s the difference in that? I guess you don’t know nothin’ about it
unlessen they had told you about it. But he told me they done it.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well ain’t these boys a putting it on them down where the
(unintelligible) are? [sounds like piping plumbers]
MR. DAISEY: I don’t know what they’re doing down there.
MR. MCKENNEY: Somebody told me they were going to put it on the gulls whenever
they seen any and shoot ‘em.
MR. DAISEY: As far as I’m concerned the gull ain’t no good to us. We got more that we
need of them. We’ve got billions and billions of ‘em.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well he’ll eat more of them eggs than that raccoon, I expect.
MR. DAISY: That’s right! There’s so many of them, the numbers is so high. That’s the
thing of it!
MR. MCKENNEY: I know one thing, he’ll eat ‘em. He don’t mind eating a live one.
Gobble them little Marsh Hens right down, them little black bitties.
MR. DAISEY: I’d say he’s really and truly the number one predator on any young bird.
I’d say that right now the Herring Gull is the number one predator. A Black Back is
worse but the numbers ain’t that bad.
MR. MCKENNEY: Bill called and told us he saw them going right in them rookeries and
eating them little birds, the Egrets and things.
MR. DAISEY: He seen ‘em go right in the rookery and get em right out of the nest and
go set out off on the flat and eat em like there wasn’t nothing to it.
MR. MCKENNEY: They eat ever bird that gets over the ocean. They eat the last one.
I’ve watched them run them down. When he gets out and he gets tired. He’ll eat every
one of them if they gets out over the ocean.
MR. LAYCOCK: They are old herring gulls, is what we call them.
MR. DAISEY: I guess if he gets tired, I guess he just runs him right down.
MR. MCKENNEY: He’ll run em right down. I’ve watched them eat them every day.
MR. HALL: Hey, Cigar, be carving on that little head there a little bit. [Mr. Daisey is
working on a decoy as the conversation progresses. The scraping sounds can be heard.]
MR.LAYCOCK: When is that trip when you are going up to Washington? Is it in May?
MR. DAISEY: June, I think.
MR. LAYCOCK: You going to take him Dave?
MR. HALL: Yeah, I’m gonna come over here and get him. If any body around here has
got a video player, I want to play this tape. I want to show you this guy down in
Louisiana. He lives just exactly like guys do. He lives on Bellacraw Island. He’s one of
my buddies down there. He’ll be there too. Boy, you talk about a character; he’s never
done anything in his life but live off the water. And even down there, he’s having trouble.
This year he had to quit trapping. You talk about a ‘coon trapper. If they hadn’t shut
her down, he’d a caught three thousand coons this year. And he can’t sell em.
MR. DAISEY: Naw, he couldn’t even give ‘em away.
MR. HALL: I’ll tell you what he’d do. He’s just like Cigar. Cigar was not telling truth,
he’d catch the same way. But if Dennis sets fifty traps, he’ll have forty-five coons next
morning.
MR. DAISEY: What’d we have one morning? We set twelve traps and we had nine
coons and three foxes.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, around that circle down there.
MR. HALL: But those marsh coons down there are so big!
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, there are.
MR. HALL: [Good grief!] You just can’t believe how many of them there are!
MR. DAISEY: There’s so many crayfish, and so many crayfish and things.
MR. LAYCOCK: They got good feed down there don’t they?
MR. HALL: He is oystering right now. He is hand-tonging oysters.
MR. DAISEY: Well what about the muskrats? He couldn’t sell the muskrats either
could he?
MR. HALL: S---, there ain’t no more muskrats! The salt water done killed them all!
There ain’t one muskrat in that marsh now. That marsh where he trapped had the highest
production of muskrats of any marsh in the world. There ain’t one living there now, not
one!
MR. LAYCOCK: What’s the Nutria doing in there?
MR. HALL: The Nutria is still hanging in there. He’s eating up everything but house
and home.
MR. MCKENNEY: They eat the boats and all up don’t they? Hell, they eat oars!
MR. HALL: There’s still a few Alligators. He’s still alligator hunting. Alligator hunting
saves him, at that particular time of the year. He does it all. He traps, he crabs, he fishes,
he fishes gill nets, he tongs oysters. It used to be old Dennis, like he said, he said,
“Every morning my whole life, I always set an alarm clock, but it never went off. I’d
wake up before the alarm clock because I was so happy to get back out there.” This guy
loves that marsh. His Daddy was a market hunter. He bootlegged ducks for New Orleans
finest restaurants for years. He raised his family that way, old man Herb; he’s still alive!
And it’s amazing how they live the same way that you did up there. And it’s amazing
how similar the attitudes are. He talks in another funny accent that people like to hear.
But I got him now. He goes all over the country with me. Last year, we had the Marriott
Hotels furnishing all the rooms, and TWA furnishing all of the plane tickets. We’ve been
all over the damn country! The last time we was up in Minnesota, he’s talked to twenty
thousand people in the Humphrey Dome. And like I say, he sees his lifestyle going. He
said, he’s going to fight to save it till the last breath.
MR. DAISEY: Well I wish him a lot of luck! [very sincere]
MR. LAYCOCK: I do too!
MR. HALL: But he’s great. He’d have never believed he’d be involved in something like
this. I took him to Minnesota, and Bud Grant, that famous football coach up there gave a
luncheon for him. He won’t wear, and that’s the way I told him; “That’s the way it
ought to be Dennis”. But he said “ I never put a damn suit on, for nothing like that for
nothing. I ain’t putting on no suit or any good clothes now!” So when he goes with me,
down there they wear white boots, because it’s hot in the summer time. That’s what all
the fishermen wear down there. You can see a guy walking around with white boots on,
that’s a fisherman.
MR. MCKENNEY: They do the same thing around here; these boys wear ‘em most
times. They are cooler, the white boots.
MR. HALL: Down there we call them “white booters”. When you see a white booter,
you’ve got you a commercial fisherman. That’s all they wear. But he went up there and
they put on this luncheon in the fanciest place in Minneapolis. I mean, the fanciest place.
And there were nothing but millionaires there. They were going to donate money to help
us get a helicopter and everything. That damned Dennis was in there! When you walked
in, everybody was wondering, ‘what is that fellow, is he the janitor or something?’ Old
Bud Grant said, “Hell no, he’s the guy I’m honoring at this luncheon!” And old Dennis, I
love him, he said, “Man, they took me up there to Minnesota. That football coach is a
hell of a fella! I like him!” But they gave him a big luncheon up there. It was really
something. I got him on the airplane and I told him, “Now goddamnit Dennis, don’t”, he
was worried about being on an airplane, and I had another outlaw with me too, a guy
named Ace Cullin. He’s about six foot, six. You’ll see him on the video too. Man what
that guy did to ducks in his life ain’t been thought of! He kept records. He averaged
sixty mallards a day! That was his average! A bad hunt was forty mallards and they
used nag planes to bait them with. He had them big sportsmen he’d take out. He said
that when they’ll get down to forty mallards, he’d get out on the rail and call up the
headquarters and tell them to crank up the plane. He said that the good hunts were one
hundred mallards a day. That’s what they were killing, one hundred mallards a day.
That’s all they’d shoot, mallards. But he goes with me on these trips too. But between
he and Dennis, they decided they were going to have a north/south duck calling
championship; Minnesota versus Louisiana. And it was going to be rigged you know,
and I… Dennis won the state duck calling championship in Louisiana three or four times.
They made him retire. Ace won it twice. Them Yankees don’t know nuthin about calling
no ducks. S---! They didn’t even have a duck call with them so they gave him an old
ratty ass duck call to use at this big contest, and it was going to judged by crowd
applause. S---, they had to give it to them southerners! They just couldn’t…it was so
damn one-sided! They gave old Ace first, and Dennis second! But I think it’s
helping…getting these guys that… It’s obvious to me that people who used to kill the
most ducks were the ones who violated the law most and cared most about safety.
MR. LAYCOCK: It seems that way. It paradoxical I know, but damn if it don’t seem
that way.
MR. HALL: That’s the way it is. That’s my whole program. The guys that are helping
me do what I can to save the ducks are the guys that we used to chase around!
MR. LAYCOCK: They’ve seen when there was a lot of them, and now they see what
it’s come to. Anybody ought to be concerned with it really, that cares anything at all
about ducks.
MR. HALL: Well, you know, all these people come down here and that’s fine. They
buy these decoys, and they buy shorebirds; and they’ve never been in the marsh, and
that’s great. But they have no comprehension of how valuable wetlands are to our
survival in this country. They love to eat seafood….
MR. DAISEY: It’s just like this man afishing! Them wetlands have all in the world to do
with this man commercial fishing, making his living. Them wetlands is where she all
begins!
MR. HALL: I’ve said this before. As far as I’m concerned, when the trapper goes and
the commercial fisherman goes, the things I am interested in life are going.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right! What the hell else, will there be?!
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s just a matter of time. And it’s been my bread and butter all my
life, my grandpa’s on back. And the way things is agoin now, its all over. We went down
there to that meeting a week before last to that meeting down in Norfolk. In all my life
I’ve always, you know, had respect for people and everything; but you go to them
meetings like that, and they’ll vote you right down! Twenty little draggers! I said, “now
boys, I gotta give it for this…” What it amounts to is a gill-netter against a little dragger,
or a oysterman against a clammer. I said, “now, if you’re gonna kill this little dragger, this
little fifty foot dragger, I got a forty-foot gill net boat. I want you to kill her too.” But
just don’t kill me and let everybody else go!
MR. HALL: We’ve got the same thing going on in Louisiana.
MR. MCKENNEY: Let me tell you what they done now! They went right there, it was
all day long, but when the time come they voted it right down and killed us stone dead.
But they didn’t kill the gill net boat. Why? And the sports fishermen! They said that
the species of Flounders is down. How can you save the Flounder? Just like he was
talking about the Black Duck! Don’t let nobody catch him, wouldn’t that be fair? But
they couldn’t done it that way.
MR. HALL: Too much money involved.
MR. MCKENNEY: Me and Captain Bob, I said, “ If you’re gonna kill me, I want you
to kill Captain Bob!”
MR. LAYCOCK: See? There’s so much money involved with them sports fishermen!
MR. HALL: You know what it all boils down to? You’ve got a polluted problem. You
got all kind of different things that are directly affecting the resource, from that
standpoint. Then you’ve got more folks, better equipment, getting out to the resource.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, better equipment.
MR. HALL: With the Redfish down there…see, we’ve got redfish. We did have redfish.
I was the one that blew the whistle on that. I had to fight like hell. Man, they got to
using spotter planes and sonar. They started catching…and the redfish down there, I
think there is probably a connection to these redfish up here, but in the Gulf of Mexico,
that’s were they spawn. And the spawn in open water, in big masses. They actually lay
their eggs in open water and those larvae wash in shore. And they hatch and spend six
years in the marsh before they go back to the ocean to breed. These big, massive schools
of redfish, called red drum here, I mean, it looks impressive when you pull over them with
a plane. The goddamned Chef down in New Orleans…it shows you how things happen
so quick. He comes up with this blackened redfish. Paul Prudomme.
And he wasn’t doing it to hurt anybody, he was just trying to make a living. All of a
sudden everybody in the United States wants to eat blackened red fish. So the
[unintelligible], they get over there and they start catching these damn redfish. It was
literally a gold rush. They’d catch them at one hundred thousand pounds a set. I am
watching this go on. And when they over set, or when they need a few more to make a
load, and they can’t handle them, they dump them overboard. In three weeks, they’d
made dumps out there where you were looking for ocean, but it was solid, covered with
dead redfish. And a lot of those fish were twenty and thirty years old. That’s how old
some of them fish were!
MR. MCKENNEY: You smother them when you catch them like that.
MR. HALL: Yeah, well they can’t release em. They die real quick. Anyway, I went out
there with a plane in the Gulf, and video camera. I video tapped the whole thing. There
were seven boats doing this. The inshore fishery was depending on that damn Gulf stock
to keep these larvae coming in here. It was going to kill the inshore fisheries. So there
was a hell of a battle, but as soon as I showed the video… the biologists were saying that
there was nothing wrong with the redfish, inshore or offshore. And you’ve got more gill
nets coming in all of the time. All of the fishermen in Florida have moved to Louisiana!
All the fishermen from Texas moved to Louisiana! The numbers of fisherman just
skyrocketed. They finally did a study and the found out that from the inshore fishing
they were getting no escapement; none getting back to the Gulf. And they were taking
the resource out there to the extent that if we hadn’t got it shut down on that, there
wouldn’t be nothing left. But then when they made the mistake…’cause I’m a member of
the Commercial Fisherman’s Association down there. I could go to the meetings and they
would listen to me. I tried to tell them, because the sports got into it, they wanted to
outlaw the commercial take and sake of redfish. I told the commercial fishermen they were
going to have to yield some on this. They couldn’t hold the line all of the way because it
they did, and they forced the issue, they would be put out of business! They didn’t want
to listen. They passed a law last year, no more commercial take of redfish.
MR. LAYCOCK: Protecting the species.
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s just what they was talking about with the “rock”.
MR. HALL: And that’s wrong because we got a lot of fine restaurants in Louisiana,
that’s what we’re famous for. That doesn’t mean a Omaha, Nebraska restaurant’s not
good. There’s not enough redfish. It’s not a real prolific species to start with. Serve
redfish in every restaurant! But we should have protected our local commercial fishermen
to allow them to sell to these restaurants, which was good for the state and all. It’s
always one side wins the whole goddamned thing, and puts the others down! Now
you’ve got wars going on down there! You’ve got commercial fishermen fighting
commercial fishermen. You’ve got sport fishermen, and down there where Dennis lives,
you’ll meet old Dennis, there’s guys making their livings off of launches, where they put
these boats overboard. S---, man, there’s traffic jams down there! There’s so much
fishing going on. They started blocking the roads! They had to bring the State Police in
there and break it up. They wouldn’t allow the sports to come down the highway! They
had them backed up for miles! There were guns drawn and all!
MR. MCKENNEY: If you’re going to take a man out of his life, man, that’s his bread
and butter!
MR. HALL: That’s right!
MR. MCKENNEY: But every law is passed for the goddamned sports fisherman! Let
me tell you what they done with the Rockfish here, now.
MR. HALL: But still, the commercial fishermen; you take those boats out there, I went
and talked to all of them captains. They admitted to me, every captain except one,
admitted to me that what they were doing was not going to last long and that they were
gonna rape the redfish. But they said, “Doc, we gotta a note on this -------- boat that if I
can make a few more days out here, I can pay for this boat and then I’m out of it.” But
still, he knew that. He knew he was going to destroy that resource, but he couldn’t stop
himself. That’s what’s wrong. There’s so much greed going on, and so many people
fighting each other.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, but see, he didn’t want to face facts. But how about a man
who passes a law like this now? This is my bread and butter, all I’ve ever done. I’m
gonna face the facts. I’m gonna agree with you one hundred percent. But how about a
law like this? You can’t catch no rockfish. But you can catch Shad now, OK. How can
you go setting them shad nets, and not catch no Rock?
MR. DAISEY: Can’t do it.
MR. MCKENNEY: Or, we went out there last year, he knows it [referring to Mr.
Daisey] we went out there last year and we set them nets three different mornings and
there was like a hundred and thirty or forty boxes of rocks, that long by that long. Now
what did we have to do with them? We had to throw them back overboard, and dead, and
the crab and the seagulls eat ‘em. See? That’s a bad law, ain’t it? What do you think
about that? Why don’t they stop them from hackering up nets? Then the man that’s got
fish, he can go out there and drift today, but see, if he can go out there and set his nets,
everybody can go and set them.
MR. DAISEY: And they’ll be dead the next morning. If you make him stay out there
with his nets, he could release them see?
MR. HALL: You would kill half that many. You’ll kill some, but you won’t kill half as
many.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you drift that net, it’s the law, you can turn him aloose. But
when he’s dead, and you’ve got to throw him back…
MR. LAYCOCK: It’s leaving the nets out all night.
MR. MCKENNEY: That’s right, that’s what does it, see.
MR. HALL: You might kill one once in a while drifting like that, but you won’t kill one
out of a hundred as you will the other way.
MR. MCKENNEY: You won’t kill one out of a hundred! With that law like it was, I
had to throw a hundred and thirty boxes over board, you know what I’d do? I took a
hammer, and with every one that wasn’t dead, I took that hammer and stuck it right there
between his eyes. And then I’d throw him over board.
MR. DAISY: Well, I know it makes you mad, but you really can’t…
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, but don’t let us set ‘em then.
MR. HALL: If you think that this is a problem right now, I hate to say this; but if you
could look forward twenty years…
MR. MCKENNEY: It can’t get no worse.
MR. HALL: Oh yeah it can.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you don’t give me but six hours to go sea clamming!
MR. HALL: I’m just saying though, that the more people, and the more involvement,
it’s going to get worse! That’s what I’m saying.
MR. MCKENNEY: It don’t make no difference. Cut it all out, cut it all out and raise
‘em in farms. That’s what’s gonna happen anyway.
MR. HALL: I wouldn’t doubt that.
MR. LAYCOCK: Yeah, I think that’s the future of it.
MR. MCKENNEY: What is Mike McGee and Bobby gonna pay me fourteen cents for,
when he can raise all he wants?
MR. LAYCOCK: That’s right, that’s what’s gonna happen.
MR. HALL: But still, when you go to farming for anything, I agree, that’s the answer.
But when you do away with the marsh people and the commercial fishermen in this
country; now maybe the people that live in the big cities new associated with that.
Because that’s the way I made my way in school. I owe my college degree to commercial
fishing. I always appreciated it.
MR. MCKENNEY: I’ve always known that he [referring to Mr. Daisey] was born and
raised in the marsh. And I known you was born and raised in the marsh. But any
goddurned thing it’s gonna help him, or me it won’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s for the
other big man!
MR. HALL: Yeah, unfortunately, I see it too. I don’t know.
MR. LAYCOCK: It’s sad though to think that we might come to place where we raise all
these things on farms. It’s not the same.
MR. DAISEY: No, it’s not the same. Not when we had a resource that would take and
renew itself.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you could get somebody to come around, and check this fellow on
the water, that’s his bread and butter, his life. Then you are talking to him. If you set,
I’m going to say at $3000.00 for him to get is gill net license, cause it cost me that much.
But don’t let you come right down here, say in five hundred yards of my net, and go
fishing. When you do that, you’re killing; really what it amounts to, is one man is gonna
kill the other one. It’s gonna be a sad thing. The government, the United States
government gives me one six hours to go catch my sea clams!
MR. HALL: Is that what it is now?
MR. MCKENNEY: Five years ago, if you would told somebody that, they would say,
”Horse-----!” You know you’ve got to have more than six hours! Six hours to go and try
to make a living! No make up day.
MR. HALL: You can’t do it that way.
MR. MCKENNEY: I bet you I can call twenty-five men trying theirselves. Trying to
pay for his boat and his home on a six-hour … And a man that passes a law like that, he
don’t know nothing about nothing! [Mr. McKenney is irate]
MR. HALL: You have to go that particular time?
MR. DAISEY: He’s got to go at that particular time, and that particular day, no matter
how bad the water is. That’s what he means by time.
MR. HALL: They should set it up on a weekly basis or something. Go any time during
that week, whenever the weather’s right, you know? Or, don’t work over a certain
amount of hours.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you are running a grocery store, and I come to you and you say
Wednesday is your day, and you open only then, where’s the difference?
MR. HALL: That’s right. But I can’t tell you what, it’s going to get worse.
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s really getting to be a sad, damn situation. And people are
getting….bad things is happening!
MR. HALL: But don’t you think on the other hand, if they hadn’t put some kind of
controls on it, the big man, the big boats would gobble every damn bit of it up, and the
little man get nothing?
MR. MCKENNEY: Every law that they’ve passed has been for the big man though!
They’re trying to cut the little one out!
MR. HALL: I think if they didn’t restrict that big man though, he’d grind you right
under.
MR. MCKENNEY: But wait a minute! They ain’t hurt him though! I can show you
how.
MR. HALL: Unless he owns a whole heap of boats or something.
MR. MCKENNEY: He’s bought every license there are. Now he’d got it like he wants
it.
MR. HALL: I see what you mean by that.
MR. MCKENNEY: Because the government, they issue so many licenses. The big
man’s made it so hard on the little man, until he’s had to sell his license and ….
MR. HALL: Well, they ought not to be allowed to do that.
MR. MCKENNEY: They wouldn’t let nobody else get it. If you wanted to go aboard
your boat, you can’t go get in to save your life, because there were some many licenses
issued. Now, you can go buy a man’s boat and his license, but you can’t go build your
boat and get yourself a license.
MR. HALL: I don’t think they ought to allow that.
MR. DAISEY: See, that’s not constitutional.
MR. MCKENNEY: That’s not constitutional! That’s right!
MR. HALL: In the business, they call that a closed fishery, or, I think… ? They’ve got
that in Alaska. The same thing.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, they got it in Alaska, ‘cause Alaska’s got everything like they
want it, and they’re coming right here!
MR. LAYCOCK: They pass it down from generation to generation, the licenses and
things.
MR. MCKENNEY: You can go get in a boat right off shore, you’re not very far either;
they look just like a goddurned city! A great, they’re ships. We’re just a little pisspot to
them. They got ships! They sell him a license if he’ll come here. You don’t never see
him throw one damn thing back! They’re killing it off out there. [tape 1 of 2 ends]
MR. DAISEY: ….there’s men coming in right today filling in wetlands, right today,
while you’re here.
MR. HALL: You see a big difference on this island from back when we were here.
They’ve worked out, and I want yall to talk about this back and forth; that if they do
save it, it’s going to be the guys that duck hunted. The duck hunters that’ll stand up for
the waterfowl, including obeying the law. This is the only way. Because the developers
damn sure aren’t going to see.
MR. DAISEY: It’s just like them fish, them little fish over there at Virginia marsh and all
up and down through them bays. They come up there and spawn, those little tinny
spots and little tinny fish like that, all up through there. In all of them fresh water places.
When the fall come, the fish’ll go on out, and there will be more fish. But if they had their
way, they’d go ahead a fill her right on in.
MR: HALL: I think generally speaking, the duck hunter, even with all of his faults, and
like you say, we used to violate the laws, shoot over the limit and all of that, but I really
think the duck hunter has more or less paid his dues and put his money where his mouth
is. They help support that land program, through, you know, paying the fees and taxes
on buying ammunition, and their duck stamps and so forth and so on. I was glad to see
them put a program in on this refuge where you’ve got to have the duck stamp, or
something, to get in to them. I think people should help pay for them. Duck hunters
pretty well purchased them from what I understand. What makes these refuges work
with duck stamp monies, it’s a mighty big portion of them. Tell me in your own words if
you believe this: that if they save duck hunting, it’s gonna be the duck hunter, primarily
behind the program?
MR. MCKENNEY: I think the duck hunters themselves will have a big input into it, if
anybody will listen to them, which is [questionable].
MR. DAISEY: They want to throw it in my face about what I done all my life. What I
done then, ain’t got a damn thing to do with what I’m gonna do from now on! I’m gonna
do what I want to from now on, and it’s right, and that’s all there is to it. That’s what
they’ll throw in your face, see, about that. If you say anything about filling in the isle,
hurting the hunting and fishing…
MR. HALL: In other words, you are still being condemned because you were a marketer?
MR. DAISEY: Oh yeah, that’s right!
[blank area on tape]
MR. HALL: …is that so?
MR. DAISEY: Shoot the cold air hurts me now.
MR. HALL: I just went and got that senior citizen’s ticket.
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, how ‘bout that!
MR. HALL: I’ve had mine for quite a while now. Cigar, tell me that story that you just
told about what happened with Tom Reed up there. Tell the whole thing about what
they were doing up there in your own words.
MR. DAISEY: Tom Reed?
MR. HALL: No, about what they were doing up there, nightlighting those bluegills down
there.
MR. DAISEY: Oh, Tom and Carl Reed was lighting bluegills in Hog Island Bay. They
was way off Sandy Island somewhere out in the Bay. That had is loaded down with
bluegills and the wind was up to the west. You had to get under that westerly bank to get
out of the seas and high wind. In them days, they used little oars and had some
[unintelligible]. They were thirteen foot long, and some of them had a little [unintelligible]
and some of them were flat bottomed.
MR. HALL: They were low sided?
MR. DAISEY: They were low sided, and water would wash right over and sink ‘em
when it got rough enough. What they done, they went to the mainland. They went
towards the mainland. They seen this light. They didn’t know who in the hell lived
there, but anyway, they go ashore. And a old German guy come to the door. They beat
on the door and said “we’re in a mess, we can’t get back aboard the boat.” He told them
to come on in and that he would give them something to eat. They sat them down to jug
of “loasses”. That’s what they called it years ago. It was molasses in this jug. He gave
them a piece of bread apiece and when they went to pull out the molasses, they had some
hair come out of there. I think one of them stuck his finger in there, and looked and seen
this mouse. There was a mouse in this molasses jug. So anyway, they sopped the
molasses. That was one of the things you done, down in the Bay. You never enough to
eat in them days. You always eat what little bit you had, then you’d pour a little
molasses in your plate, and whatever piece of bread you had left, you sopped that, and
that made up your meal. Uncle Tom [Varner?], and them, they used to use sugar.
They’d fry fat meat and put a little sugar in, and sop that. Same thing, you know?
MR. HALL: No much for grub was it?
MR. DAISEY: Now listen, that’s what them old people’d eat in them days. I ain’t
kidding you. That’s the way they lived. All of them would go down to the Bay in these
old boats. I went with a man like that. He wouldn’t give you no grub that would amount
to nothing. He just get two or three things that you needed, and he’d steam clams or and
damn thing you’d find. I lived off of K rations in the 1940’s. They’d wash up on the
beach. The whole beach was lined up with K rations. He’d go along and open up them
cans and get them two little chocolate bars out, you know. There was some hardtacks in
there and he’d fill his pockets with them. That’s what we eat.
MR. HALL: He thought he’d found Christmas!
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it son! They had little chocolate bars in them.
Sometimes a can of potted meat, and powdered eggs. We found a whole big thing of
powdered eggs. We mixed them with two or three good eggs, you know. Son, we had the
biggest feast you ever seen! But you lived tough, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday. A boxed of gun shells is what you carried, and you didn’t waste
them either. You didn’t shoot no ducks flying. You made grocery shots. Every time you
shot, you wanted to get something.
MR. HALL: Or, you kill a lot full of birds.
MR. DAISEY: If the tides was right.
MR. HALL: Or, if you catch them on that drift. Boy, then you could take ‘em.
MR. DAISEY: Catch ‘em on that drift, and shore birds was on that drift you could cut a
lane right down through them.
MR. HALL: They were good to eat too.
MR. DAISEY: They were. You plucked the breast right out of them, and they were
better than nothing. I trapped muskrats on the south end of Cedar Island beach. And
we’d eat the muskrats, and sell the hides, you know. We lived off of the land. We had
[sounds like] terrapin. I catch seventy some terrapin in one day off of one mud bog.
They were big old terrapins. We used to sell them to [sounds like] Miles Hancock.
MR. HALL: So, do you want to tell me about your going over to Washington to this
Ducks Unlimited meeting?
MR. DAISEY: I’m scared to death.
MR. HALL: I want you tell about how you see that Ducks Unlimited fits into saving the
ducks.
MR. DAISEY: Well, if you hadn’t of had Ducks Unlimited, god knows how bad it would
be. I believe that. I believe that’s a fair way to put it. Without Ducks Unlimited I don’t
think we’d probably have anything. I don’t think Ducks Unlimited is one hundred
percent pure, some of the members any way. I’ll put it that way. Some of the people
that belong to Ducks Unlimited. That’s what I’ve got to say about it. I don’t know
much more to add to that. I just think that the organization over all, is helping ducks. It’s
a matter of public record. I guess anybody can check on it, I mean, what they do with the
money. I knows a lot of the big members, a lot of the people that have been in charge of
it, was important people, you know. I know what they done. You know who was head
of it at one time don’t you? I don’t want to mention the man’s name but you know who
was head of it at one time.
MR. HALL: From the Polk’s Island club.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. He shot as many… he brought over [unintelligible] I’m
sure.
MR. HALL: He’s done that a few times.
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe he has. But he give me hell if I trapped them. See?
This is what I…
MR. HALL: They were worried to death if they seen me sail by up there. Because
[unintelligible].
MR. DAISEY: That’s right! You better believe they were scared to death of this man!
You better believe it. And the man that was scared of us was the best friend both of us
ever had, to tell you the truth! He’s the nicest man on earth. But he know’d we hunted,
we lighted, we’d do anything, you know, see!
MR. HALL: I heard about [unintelligible].
MR. DAISEY: We’re not really gonna bother them people because we know that was
the man’s living, and we didn’t go down there.
MR. HALL: [Unintelligible}
MR. DAISEY: We never bothered them.
MR. HALL: It’s a different day.
MR. DAISEY: They way I see it was in my lifetime, when I trapped ducks, and did bad
things, I guess it was bad, I’m sure it was. On the other hand, these people that was
in…like these big clubs, they would shoot thirty, forty, or fifty bluegills, that was all
right. But if I catched a hundred or two black ducks, then, they would call me a son of a
bitch, you know! They didn’t like it at all. These people were members of organizations
like Ducks Unlimited, they were prominent people; real prominent, nice prominent
people! They wasn’t, they’d just get carried away with the shooting I guess.
MR. HALL: They didn’t rob a bank.
MR. DAISEY: They wouldn’t have robbed a bank or nothing like that, I’d say that they
never [broke another] law besides that. But this time is a whole lot different. We got to
do it real different now, or damn if we ain’t in real trouble! We’re in real trouble now.
We’re in last days of hunting if everybody don’t get together and do all they can do to
preserve the wetlands and be conservative with the birds; or the take of the birds. I mean,
this man can’t never be satisfied again to go hunting, because we’ve been used to shooting
all we wanted and doing what we wanted to do. So it’s a little bit different now. The
only time we go up now, when we go off for two things; [unintelligible] and a oyster
basket. We try to get us some ducks if we can get ‘em. That’s a pile to eat. Just like the
Indian would do. He’d get a pile to eat, and that all they want. If we get us a basket off
oysters, or a hundred clams, we come home with something we can feed you with. And I
enjoy that more than I do carrying the whole damn load of ducks, you know what I mean?
It’s more fun to me. And we carried a little cold beer with us didn’t we?
MR. HALL: Yeah, we liked a little cold beer. So, you said, that the guys who used to
kill the ducks so bad, are now the ones who are the conservationists on this island, trying
to save the wetlands and everything?
MR. DAISEY: I believe that most of the people who have been down that road know
more about it that the people that ain’t never done it. In other words, if you’ve done
something in your lifetime, you know what you’ve done. And you know how many you
destroyed. And nobody’s going to…you don’t have to let somebody else judge you, you
can judge yourself. If you are a fair minded person, you can judge for yourself whether
it’s right or wrong. That’s the reason why I think that most of the people who has
hunted, and done too much of it, are today the conservationists, today. That’s my
personal opinion of it.
MR. HALL: And you believe that they’ll be the ones that save it?
MR. DAISEY: If ducks can be saved, I believe they’ll have a big part to play in it. But
there again, Ducks Unlimited has got all these members. I mean, they’re gonna have to
train them people to do the right thing, you know? They’re gonna have to do the right
thing. Really and truly, the kill itself should be the big deal about it. Get out there and
get hunting! Get out in the open air, and look at stuff! I got so many more, I’d just rather
look at it. I love to look at it, than to kill it. That’s my point! That’s they way I feel
now about it. I think they can enjoy that too in the same way, you know! The killing is
not the big deal. We like to…I like to go up to the hunting lodge to the [sounds like]
Redeye Club. I take my gun up there, and I don’t never take it out of the boat! I never
take it out of the case! I drink me some beer, and eat me some food, and tell these yarns
you know. We get talking about things we’ve done, and enjoy ourselves.
MR. HALL: What if somebody told you that you couldn’t go back in the marsh any
more? You’d have to blind your eyes to what you see behind your house?
MR. DAISEY: Well, it would be all over for me, you know. Even though that I don’t
care to kill a whole lot of stuff today, I’m not opposed to no one else going hunting. I’ll
never be opposed to hunting. I think it’s a thing that should be done. Trapping,
fishing…it’s a resource that’s renewable if it’s done right. If you do it right, it’s a
renewable resource that you can enjoy for the rest of your days, generation after
generation. That’s the way I see it.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s the sad part of it. Is that people…my nephew down in North
Carolina, his wife just had a little baby, a little boy, and he named it after me! I didn’t
think nobody’d ever name nothing after me! I’d like to see that little boy live long enough
to where he could get out and go hunting and kill a pair of ducks once in a while; or go out
and pick up a mess of oysters, and things. But if things keep going like they’re going
around here, especially around Chincoteague, he’ll have to go somewhere’s else besides
Chincoteague to find anything.
MR. DAISEY: That, he will. That he will.
MR. HALL: If it wasn’t for this refuge here, I don’t think we’d have any ducks at all.
MR. DAISEY: No, we wouldn’t have none at all.
MR. HALL: There’s no way in the world.
MR. DAISEY: This and me has hunted all my life. We’ve been through all kinds of
scrapes in our hunting life. We hunted and trapped together, and fished. What do you
say, [addressing new person, unclear].
UNIDENTIFIED: Like I was just saying, I was fortunate enough that my nephew has
just had a little baby boy, and he named it after me. I didn’t think anybody would ever
name anything after me. I’d like to see that little fellow be able to come up and go hunting
if he wanted to, and kill him some ducks, or go up and get him a mess of oysters to eat, or
clams, like we’ve done all our life. I swear I think he’d going to have to go somewheres
else but Chincoteague to do it, the way the development is going on here. As crazy as
everything is getting. As far as I’m concerned, if it wasn’t for this refuge here, I doubt if
you’d ever have any ducks. They couldn’t stay here in the marshes. It’s just about
impossible. The hunting pressure is so strong here. When we first got this refuge, I was
like everybody else, I thought it was the worst thing in the world that had happened.
Cause you couldn’t go around hunting like you was used to doing. I found out different
now that I’ve gotten older, and with the way everything is going. It’s a good thing we
have these refuges. It’s the only chance you’ve got. If the duck has a place to go rest,
and if you don’t get away from any hunting pressure. Tell me about…use the words
Ducks Unlimited and the importance of saving the habitat, and how that’s their mission.
UNIDENTIFIED: I don’t think you can put enough emphasis on the importance of
saving the habitat. I think that probably in the past, Ducks Unlimited has done a fairly
descent job at it. I don’t know how they’re going to progress in the future because it
costs so much money to…anything around the water has gotten to be so expensive. I
would say that they are still trying to do a pretty decent job. I belong to Ducks
Unlimited, and support it. But a lot of us have learned that we’re going to have to … a
lot of the duck hunters, they get carried away a lot of the times. Of course it’s probably
easy to understand. You go hunting in pretty weather, and you can’t kill your limit.
Then when you get a chance to do it, the jobs stops. I’ve been through all of that. We’re
going to have to all do it. We’re all going to have to all try and protect the resource,
what’s left of it, as well as the habitat.
MR. HALL: What about working together? If we’re going to save ducks, and duck
hunting we’re all going to have work together.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s for sure. Another facet of it is that the hunter is going to have
be a little more frugal than what he’s been. He’s going to have to obey the laws, as
restrictive as they seem to be. I think we’re all going to have to take an interest and try
to keep the habitat we’ve got left; and destroyed in the name of progress. I can’t see
where it’s any progress when you destroy your natural resources. Ain’t no progress to
it, as far as I’m concerned. And like that little boy, my namesake; I hope that by the
time he gets eighteen or twenty years old he’ll be able to go out and shoot him a pair of
ducks once in a while.
MR. HALL: What would you do if they told you you couldn’t go back in marsh any
more? How would you feel?
UNIDENTIFIED: Well, I guess I could take it, maybe at my age. But I still, I wouldn’t
like it at all.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
UNIDENTIFIED: It’s part of my life and it’s always been. I still like to do it. I don’t
do as much of it as I did, but I still enjoy getting out in the marsh, and getting out in the
fresh air. I hope we can conserve it some kind of way. It’s going to be a tough fight.
And everybody’s going to have to work together to do it.
MR. HALL: At one time you ran from the Game Warden, and ran from me. We had
some times…looking back on that, would you ever have thought that in your lifetime
you’d be sitting with me, like you are now, and saying what you’re saying?
UNIDENTIFIED: [Mr. McKenney?] Well, it’s probably true. I’ve been [unintelligible]
a few times, but I like to think that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned a little something. If
you can’t learn anything as you go through this life, you’re in bad shape.
MR. DAISEY: You’re darned right!
UNIDENTIFIED: I think I’ve learned a little better. If I had it to do over again, there’s a
lot of things I did, as far as shooting a lot of ducks, and taking a lot of game and stuff, I
don’t think I would do it.
MR. HALL: And you never got caught? You weren’t ever really….?
UNIDENTIFIED: No, I’ve never even paid a fine. I can’t really complain about the law.
It don’t bother me all that much, really. ‘Cause I done a lot of stuff in the past. I’ve just
been fortunate I guess, in a lot of ways. The one thing that force, they are spread so thin,
there’s so few of them, and they have so much territory to cover, I don’t know how they
do as good a job as they do. I seen a time that me and the Game Wardens wasn’t too
good a friends. But I’ve got a lot more respect them than I used to have. Because they’re
doing a hell of a difficult job. It’s a pretty near impossible job, counting the numbers of
them.
MR. HALL: What about the issue that there will never be enough Game Wardens to
police the hunters, and that the hunters are going to have to obey the law because they
want to?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, I think that’s a very valid point. I think it’s like a lot of other
things. People have got to be educated. We’ve got to start with the younger generations
that’s coming up now. Programs in schools, and everything. I believe there is more
emphasis, in fact, I know there is more emphasis on conservation than there was when I
was coming up. You didn’t hardly know what the word was in those days, when we
were young and first coming up. It was just natural to go out, and if you wanted to kill a
pair of ducks, go ahead a kill them whether the season was in or out. Conservation was
just a foreign word as far as we were concerned, when we were coming up. But I see
more of it all the time, where people are more interested in it. I think it’s a good trend.
MR. HALL: Do you think that the responsibility of saving duck hunting is more on the
hunter’s shoulder than anyone else?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, I would say. Even the past, as far as purchasing these refuges,
and things like that, the duck hunter has paid his dues. I mean he’s…. [tape goes blank]
MR. DAISEY: You’ll catch ‘em right out here. They go right out here. You’ve love em
don’t you? [addressing an unidentified woman]
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: No, I don’t know. [all laugh] I never tried one actually.
MR. DAISEY: You sure you don’t want to try this one?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Okay.
MR. DAISEY: You know you could try this one. Try it one time. I believe you can eat
him. Just put him in your mouth and chew. He’s good! He’s the best thing you ever eat.
He tastes good don’t he?
[Woman makes noises as if to say it tastes very bad, all laugh. Take goes blank, restarts]
MR. DAISEY: So you just that one I made forty or fifty years ago. You just double it in
like that and push this one in, and screw it on top. It goes on there like that, and then
you’ve got a tin shot. Goddamned if you can’t whoop and hollar with that. [tape skips]
See! This is just a double cap, that’s all it is. It’s a Browning deal. I had it made forty or
fifty years ago. You just double it in there like that and pushing this one in and screw it
on top. It goes on top like that and you’ve got a ten shot. Goddamn if you can’t whoop
and hollar with that!
UNIDENTIFIED: And you just shoot a mess with that?
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it! Just as long as you pull the trigger, she’ll shoot
like you wouldn’t believe. To tell you the truth, I hope that these drug dealers don’t get
on to this. They talk about them M-60 whatchumakallits, now, what do you think I
could do with that? Sitting down, with ten buck shots, with twelve in the shot. Magnum
buck shot. Jesus Christ, you could fight off an army! That’s a real deadly weapon than
them damn Japanese semi-automatic rifles. …for fifty yards, I’d say. They ain’t using
them for distance. Hell, they’re in close range. There ain’t no telling. And she’s muzzle-heavy
see? That makes her muzzle-heavy. That was one of the things that when they
came out with the 1100, I don’t think they recognized it. She was a little bit muzzle-heavy
anyway, and when you put that piece on, she really is. All you got to do is keep
shooting the horizon, see?
[tape skips, Mr. Hall making adjustment to video camera and tape recorder]
MR. HALL: Stedwell, you say you’ve had your problems with federal game wardens?
[addressing younger male]
MR. DAISEY: You’ve had your problems with the federal game wardens too, I’m aware
of that.
STEDWELL: Yes sir, I’ve sure had my problems with them. It’s more one of those
things, the problems that I had with the federal people was more or less self inflicted.
You know! I brought it on myself. It took me a lot longer to grow up than most people
does. You know? When I was a kid I realized early that a sack of corn was directly
related to how many ducks I could kill. Up until my 30’s, when I was a little over 30
years old, I never saw a game warden. I didn’t know what they was. Then, all of a
sudden here they came. Yeah, I was upset. I was hot. I was mad at the judges. I was
mad at the game warden. But once I grew up, I realized that I was wrong, and they were
right. It’s more or less a thing that they need to be there, they have to be there! To
protect what’s left. If people were left to their own devices, there wouldn’t be a bird to
shoot at.
MR. DAISEY: Don’t you think taking your license was one thing that hurt you?
STEDWELL: Yeah, taking my license was devastating to me. Yeah, it hurt me, it hurt me
real bad. But it also made me realize that you can’t always take, and not put something
back. Every man’s got to put something back. Once I went to court and they got through
to me, I joined Duck Unlimited. I’ve been a sponsor. I raised birds and turn them loose
‘cause I feel like that I have stolen something from the future; from future generations that
needs to be put back. I was wrong, and that’s the way it is. It’s kind of like now, when
you talk about going up to Washington to talk to these people; on the other side of the
coin, it takes two sides to every story. Those people got to understand that education is
the key to success. It always is in anything you ever go through. In any endeavor in life.
And those people need to hear from somebody such as yourself, or possibly me, that
there is two sides to the story. We aren’t all born in rich and influential families where we
had game preserves where we could hunt on when we wanted. The poor man has to go
through his [own] devices. But that poor man needs to understand at a early age through
education that wildlife is a resource that’s for everybody, not just the rich. It’s also for
the poor. And the environment as well, needs to be protected just as much as the wildlife
does. It’s important to preserve what we have, but it’s also important to look down the
road a few generations and say that we’re going to clean the environment up, and we’re
going to look after what’s left. It’s all got to be a package.
MR. DAISEY: Where to do live at?
STEDWELL: I live in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It’s right on the Potomac River.
We have a lot birds, a lot of puddle ducks, a lot of divers. Also, being on the Northern
Neck, I am bordered by two rivers. I have access to the Rappahannock and the Potomac.
MR. DAISEY: What is the condition of the river right now?
STEDWELL: I’ve lived there all my life, and I’ve watched the grass leave, I’ve watched
the ducks leave, and now I’m watching the oysters die. I’ve watched the way of life that
I grew up with totally be destroyed by pollution. And my philosophy is, I think there
can be a compromise between development, pollution and jobs, along with the
environment. But you can’t go too far in either direction. You can’t stop the
development totally, and you can’t over-develop. It’s got to be a cooperative
combination of two things; that’s between the people and the administration. The
administration has the power and the ability to control it. They need to hear all sides of
the story. I am always of the philosophy that an informed decision is the best one that
you can possibly make. I’ll tell you something, I’ve had some run ins with the game
wardens. But the bottom line is; basically what they were doing is basically right as far as
protecting the wildlife. It’s kind of one of those things, …
MR. HALL: We’re going to have to go back.
STEDWELL: I did have some problems with the games wardens, no question about it.
But my problems were more or less self inflicted. I realized that the game wardens
weren’t totally wrong. I was doing the wrong thing, no question about it. In the same
token, in reference to the game wardens, Ducks Unlimited has got to understand along
with a lot of other people, that it’s a combination of both. You know what I mean? In
other words, when that man gives you a license, you buy that duck stamp and you go on
that marsh, it’s a certain code of ethics that you ought to be able to understand yourself,
on your own. I think education is always the key to success.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
STEDWELL: It always is. You can be a Ph. D., but you’ve got to apply it. And if you
educate a kid when he is young. I work around at home with some boys, and I let them
come on the place and hunt. But it’s always a thing where my policy is that you don’t
every shoot hen birds. It shows that you’re a better man if you pass up a hen bird, and
let that bird go, rather than to kill it just to be killing it. The whole thing of it is watching
the birds come in on the wing, and coming on the decoys. That’s a big thrill. Killing ain’t
the most important thing of it. You know that yourself. Of course, when you were
younger, and I was a lot younger, it seemed like to me killing was the most important
thing. But once you realize that that’s not the most important thing, you reach a point
where you can’t take, and never put something back. I learned that the hard way. You
can never take, and not put something back. The same goes with everybody concerned.
The people…
MR. DAISEY: And for you too, huh?
STEDWELL: No question about it. Ducks Unlimited has a good reputation, but the
quality of the organization is no better than the people that are controlling it.
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it!
STEDWELL: You can sit there and spend a thousand dollars, and by duck that’s going to
go for ten cents, but tomorrow morning you can get up, and the law says you’re only
supposed to kill one black duck and you kill fifteen, you done more harm that you done
the night before!
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
STEDWELL: All of it goes hand in hand. The Fish and Wildlife Service, the
administration, EPA, as far as pollution in the marshes and in the creeks and rivers and
everything. It’s all right there together. It’s a cooperative program from educating the
little folks, right on up to people my age, and your age.
MR. DAISEY: You had a lot of problems with the wardens. Didn’t they take your
license?
STEDWELL: Yeah, and taking the license and being exposed was one of the biggest
things that had the most impact on me when I got caught. You know, everybody likes to
be Joe Cool. In other words, they [unintelligible] with a .44 magnum, you know what I
mean? You’re the “bad” dude. I broke all of those laws, I dug into cliffs, I put corn out,
and I killed geese over the limit, and shot at night by the moon. But there you are in the
spotlight, the Fish and Wildlife Service has got you, and believe me, it’s devastating for
them to take your hunting license. That is one aspect of it. And the other aspect of it is;
everybody that you know, that has some sort of respect for you, now you’re exposed as
a game violator. When you look at it, here you are with a shotgun and a sack of corn, and
you’re fighting wildlife that’s got feathers on him. Now what chance does he have? You
don’t leave him much chance! Once you grow up, and you realize that, it’s not a real
good feeling to know that you’ve done something to give somebody… it’s like going in
here with a stick and beating a kid. It’s just as bad as far as I’m concerned.
MR. HALL: Historically, we’ve done these things, but we do have room for
improvement on obeying the rules.
STEDWELL: Right. Yeah. My personal opinion is that the Fish and Wildlife Service is
there for the purpose obviously. Mother Nature put the wetlands and the resource these
for a purpose obviously. But it’s up to the people that hunt the birds to use ethics in
order to save what’s left. You can’t always take, and not put something back. If the
duck hunters don’t realize what they are doing, and they think it’s funny that they can
put out a sack of corn and kill “x” number of ducks. But the bottom line is this; if they
kill those birds that’s come in their area and shoot them, next year there’s going to be less.
Next year there’s going to be less if they shoot over the limit. The laws are there for a
purpose. They are made from day to day for a purpose. And they are almost made for
limits. The people spend a lot of money and a lot of effort figuring out exactly what you
should hunt, when you should hunt it. And it’s there for a reason. It’s educated people
that made informed decisions. And it’s not up to the average duck hunter to take the law
into his own hands, and take from the future. You’re stealing from your own self.
MR. DAISEY: It’s the same way with the wetlands.
STEDWELL: It all goes hand in hand.
MR. DAISEY: How about in the vicinity over there where you live now?
STEDWELL: Right now, more or less, it’s being developed up.
MR. DAISEY: What’s going to happen?
STEDWELL: What going to happen is the same thing. There is going to be an increase in
progression of pollution, an increase of loss of wetlands, lost habitats to birds. It don’t
take a very prudent person to realize that those wetlands, and these marsh grasses
provide the basic chain of life. And it works on up from…
MR. DAISEY: I guess it’s getting like it everywhere.
STEDWELL: It is like it everywhere! It’s a bad situation, from the duck hunter right on
up to the administration. But you can save it!
MR. DAISEY: I believe that. I really do!
STEDWELL: There’s got to be a concerted effort, and it’s got to be an effort that’s based
on informed, knowledgeable people making the right decisions. It boils down to this; the
duck hunter with his own code of ethics, when he buys that duck stamp has got to realize
that he can’t go out there and take over the limit. And the same decision’s got to be made
by a certain Board of Supervisors of a certain county, when the give the development
company permission to build a condo or a development over wetlands. They’ve got to
realize that there is room for a certain amount of them, but it can’t go overboard. ‘Cause
it’s… I think when it boils down to it, if it’s going to be saved, if it’s going to be made
back, regressing instead of progressing, it’s going to be basically the duck hunters that are
going to half to chip in and do it. I made a suggestion last year to a lot of people that I
know, that probably have some sort of respect for me because of the carving and other
things, maybe one year maybe no duck hunting, or no shooting hen birds. It’s gotta be up
to the duck hunter. He’s got to push and he’d got to shove to achieve what he needs to
do.
MR. HALL: Could you comment if you would to help [people] realize that saving
habitat is the key to saving waterfowl, but obeying the rules is important also.
[side 3 of tape ends, side 4 begins a separate interview with a older gentleman named
John].
JOHN: I live at 202 Atlantic Road, [unintelligible], Virginia.
MR. HALL: John, tell me a little bit about your career with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
JOHN: Well, I started with the Fish and Wildlife service in 1938. I was the second
permanent employee at the Bombay Hook Refuge when it was established. In 1939, I
transferred from Refuges over to Law Enforcement. I was transferred to Chincoteague.
Then, in 1943 when the Chincoteague Refuge was established I transferred back again to
Refuges. I was in charge of the Chincoteague Refuge until 1949. Then, I transferred back
into Law Enforcement and I was sent to New Jersey in October of 1949. Around April
of 1950 I was transferred to Cambridge, Maryland in charge of the Maryland district. In
1953 I was transferred to New York State. We moved there in August of 1953. I was
stationed there until I retired in 1968.
MR. HALL: You were the Agent in Charge of the State of New York when you retired?
JOHN: Yes, I was in charge of the State of New York, except for the area from Greene
County, south. I had all of New York State, north and west of Greene County.
MR. HALL: Now, when you were on Assateague Island, you just made a nature walk
this morning, how old are you John?
JOHN: Seventy-eight.
MR. HALL: You went out and made a couple hour walk, out bird watching, and looking
at the wildlife. Comparing the years that you were stationed on Chincoteague Refuge to
today, as far as waterfowl, give me some comparison.
JOHN: Well, back in the 1940’s we could figure on at least twenty or twenty-five
thousand ducks on the refuge through the winter. At the present time I don’t think we
had more than maybe fifteen hundred ducks on the refuge through this past winter. Now,
we did have an increase in snow geese. Snow geese were very few and far between back
in the early 1940’s.
MR. HALL: When did they close the season on Snow geese?
JOHN: Oh, way back in, back in the 1920’s.
MR. HALL: But they [the geese] gradually increased?
JOHN: Oh yeah. Well, in the late 1930’s there was a flock of approximately thirteen
thousand Snow geese, Greater Snow Geese along the Atlantic Coast. And they have
increased up to the present time when there are approximately three hundred and fifty
thousand.
MR. HALL: But the ducks are…give me your idea of what the situation is with our
ducks.
JOHN: Well, as far as I am concerned, unless something very drastic is done in the next
four or five years, five years at most, our ducks are going to be gone! While our geese are
in good shape now, if the farmers every change their method of harvesting their corn, our
geese are going to be gone. Because they depend on those corn fields for at least eight
percent of their food.
MR. HALL: Describe to me what it was like protecting this Refuge when you were here,
as far as people who violated the game laws.
JOHN: Well, actually, it wasn’t too bad. There were some violations. But most of the
violations occurred in a herd of goats up around Ragged Point. They’d come over and kill
a goat, and say that they had killed a deer. They would take it back and do with it like
they would a deer. There was some waterfowl hunting, but not, I wouldn’t say it was
too much. Back in 1947, I tried to apprehend a couple of fellows. One of them
ambushed me and shot me a couple of times. He went to jail for a while.
MR. HALL: What happened that day?
JOHN: Well, I had had my co-operator, Jim Williams sent me over here the night before.
He went and took the boat back. I was walking up an old road that we had made when I
saw these two men come out of the bushes with a bag over their back. And at about the
same time, they saw me. They dropped the bag, which had ducks in it, and ran back in
the bushes. I followed them until I got in to, I don’t know, maybe three or four hundred
yards, when I was shot. They didn’t come back to the boat that they had used to come
over in. They went over to the cove there were some people working on oyster and clam
beds and they had gotten those people to take them back to Chincoteague. I waited until
late in the afternoon for them to come back down to the boat, not knowing that they had
gone down to the cove. At that time a boat came along and picked me up and took me
back to Chincoteague.
MR. HALL: Now, you took two loads? [shot twice]
JOHN: Yeah, two shots.
MR. HALL: How close?
JOHN: Oh, fifteen yards.
MR. HALL: What happened? What transpired when you were shot?
JOHN: Well, it just felt like somebody had just hit me with their fist. That’s all. I had a
Navy foul weather jacket on, which I thick is what saved me. I got hit in the elbow here,
and on this side I’ve got oh, possibly thirty-five or forty shots still in there.
MR. HALL: It got you in the face too, didn’t it?
JOHN: Yeah. One hit here, and between my eyes and in my ears, and one up here.
MR. HALL: Did you go down?
JOHN: Yeah, I dropped, yeah!
MR. HALL: What did you do then?
JOHN: Well, there wasn’t much I could do except go back and wait at their boat.
MR. HALL: You weren’t concerned about your life?
JOHN: No, I didn’t feel that I had been shot too bad. When I took my jacket off and
shook it, like that, and shot rattled out of it just like beans in a kettle.
MR. HALL: I notice yesterday, you talked to Walter Clark, the guy that shot you. Over
the years have things settled down, as far as….?
JOHN: Well, yes and no. It’s one of those things that with the job, you’ve got to take a
certain number of chances. And there’s no need for me to be sore because somebody tried
to do something to me to protect themselves. So, you just have to let bygones be
bygones.
MR. HALL: It seems to me John, there is a definite difference in attitude on this island
as it relates to Fish and Wildlife agents and protection, as it was in the old days. Because
what I am told, is that there was a certain amount of resentment when the government
took this island.
JOHN: Yes, oh yes.
MR. HALL: And the people felt that they had a right to come back, and that is what
they were doing. They were back and getting them ducks, or deer, or whatever. But as
time has done on, they’ve realized, every one of them, including Walt Clark, says that the
best thing that ever happened was when the government got this land because it would be
developed and destroyed.
JOHN: Well, when I drove down here in 1939, the island was in what you might say an
economical disaster. Everybody lived off of the water. There was no businesses of any
kind on here. And everybody lived on the water. These people had done it so long that
they figured that God put the birds here and they were going to take them when they got
good and ready, when they wanted to and as many as they wanted to. There wasn’t any
SOB’s coming in here and telling them that they couldn’t. But when the second World
War started, the Navy put in an auxiliary Air Base over on the mainland. A lot of the
boys were drafted from here and were sent to other parts of the country where they met
girls off the island. Some of them married girls that were away from home and brought
them back. The fellows that were sent to the Naval Station met the girls over on the
island, and some of them married. Some of them stayed here, and some moved back to
their own homes. I think that was the main starting of the change in attitude. I brought in
new blood, new ideas, new attitudes, and since the Refuge has had a bridge, there have
been a lot of new people come in from other parts of the country. It has changed the
attitude by at least seventy-five percent. Twenty-five years ago Chincoteaguers going
across the causeway would see a person standing along the road with a pair of binoculars
and they’d say, “Look at that damn fool standing out there, watching something!” Now,
they’ve found that about half of their livelihood, especially the motels and restaurants,
come from those same people! Their attitude towards birdwatchers has changes entirely.
They would like to develop the island, yes, but I don’t see how they are going to do it
right now at the present time, and under the present regulations.
MR. HALL: It seems to me John, that the guys who were the worst violators in terms of
shooting too many ducks, or selling them, seem to be the ones who are most concerned
with conserving the ducks today.
JOHN: That’s true. Well, you take, can I name names?
MR. HALL: Sure.
JOHN: Tom Reed used to be one of the main violators. Cigar Daisey. And at the
present time, their attitude is changed to directly opposite of what it was then. They
knew at that time that they had to take ducks and market them to make a living. Which I
agreed with. And at that time, we made our greatest effort on the trapping and marketing
of ducks. If somebody went out and maybe killed a duck for maybe Sunday dinner they
didn’t make too much of an effort to try to catch him. Because we knew that he needed
that meat for his living. On the other hand, if we decided that somebody was killing and
selling ducks, then we went after him. The first case that I made when I was transferred
down here was a duck trapper that we caught up on Ragged Point, on the part of the
Refuge. He was one of those that the government couldn’t tell him what to do. He was
just too smart for the wardens. They couldn’t catch “ST”. But we caught him anyway,
and gave him a little ride down to Norfolk to the Commissioner’s Office. It’s been a fight.
First when they get the trappers, and take them in to court, they’d be fined twenty-five,
fifty, or maybe a hundred dollars. If they didn’t have the money, they always had friends
that they could barrow money from to pay the fine. Then they pay them back with
ducks. But we finally got around to talking to the judges and persuaded them to give
them little jail sentences. Boy, I’m telling you, that made a difference! When a judge said,
sixty day, ninety days, or a hundred and eighty days in jail, there wasn’t anybody that
they could persuade to sit in jail for them! Now, they could barrow money for the fine,
but they couldn’t fine somebody that wanted to sit in jail for them! Then, when the
traffic in wildlife was made a felony that put the cap on it. We don’t find one trap a year
down in the Virginia part of the peninsula.
MR. HALL: It’s just about stopped it.
JOHN: It’s just about stopped the market traffic.
MR. HALL: Now, let’s talk about what went on with the sport hunting. There’s been a
war ever since 1900 against market hunting, and as you said, we’ve done a pretty good
job of stopping duck market hunting. How do you see the compliance level with sport
hunting?
JOHN: Well, there’s a couple of ways of looking at it. This peninsula is one of the
birthplaces, I guess, in the United States as far as waterfowl violations is concerned,
particularly on baiting. You kind find bait anywhere along this peninsula wherever
there’s ducks or geese. Not so much down here, as it is up in Maryland and Delaware.
That is an economic windfall for a lot of the farmers particularly in the Eastern Shore of
Maryland. Some of those farms are rented out to professional guides, and maybe the
owner will take care of the guiding. I’ve known of cases where on a good shooting day a
guide would fill at least one blind six of eight times. He’d make sure that when they got
their limit, they got out of the blind and put another batch in there. A lot of times when
you get along of goose hunters they didn’t stop at the limit. Consequently, it was quite a
slaughter at times. We had one landowner up around Chestertown, Maryland; he was
quite an entrepreneur. He took out hunting parties, he took out fishing parties and he had
horseback rides on his property. He had a huge farm. We got information that he was
trapping geese you use as live decoys. So, we set him up one day and caught his manager
and one of his helpers. They paid something like eighteen hundred dollars for trapping
two geese. That’s what was in the trap when we saw them. We seized the geese that he
had in his pen. They were geese that he had trapped. You could tell that they were birds
that he had trapped because they had the pinion chopped off of the wing. Some of those
were all healed up, and some were right raw that had just been done.
MR. HALL: What do you think had to be done today, to have a better level of
compliance with the hunters?
JOHN: Well you’ve just got to convince them that unless they change their tactics, they
are going to be out of hunting in a few years. Frankly, I think there is possibly as much
as a hundred percent of the legal kill, of ducks that are killed illegally. I don’t mean by
organized hunts or anything like that. Of course they take, they go on. But the average
person who goes out hunting; he’ll go out today and won’t get much. May be won’t get
any shooting. And he’ll go another day and he’ll have all kinds of hunting, and he’ll kill
whatever he can that day. Now maybe he won’t get but two or three ducks over the limit
but when you add that up to maybe a million hunters it adds up to a lot of birds.
MR. HALL: Particularly now, it’s more critical, if we can restore the habitat, to have a
breeding population that can actually use the habitat. How do you feel about that?
JOHN: I feel this way. To have wintering habitat, you’ve got to have breeding habitat in
the summer. And that is really going fast. For instance, during this past drought, a lot of
potholes and sloughs and stuff like that in the main breeding grounds of Canada and the
north central United States dried up. The farmers took advantage of it and ploughed in
up. Most times, they will never be replaced. Even under the most favorable conditions,
it will take five to ten years for one of those ponds to come back.
MR. HALL: And don’t we have to be concerned about having enough breeding birds if it
does come back?
JOHN: That’s true! And if you don’t have the breeding birds it doesn’t make any
difference how much breeding habitat you’ve got. The only way I can see…
[Mr. Hall stops take to put in a new battery]
JOHN: …like Tom Reed and Cigar Daisey have made a complete about face. They are
now all for conservation. They realize that what they had been doing was wrong at the
time, but they had no other way of making a living and consequently, they did it. It was a
question of survival.
MR. HALL: I want you to go real quickly over the fact that what happened that day
when you were patrolling over here about coming up on these subjects and when you get
ready to name the subject that shot you, I want you to say that “Walter Clark, the guy
that shot me was later arrested and convicted.” Whatever you want to say. You had been
dropped off the night before of the island and you patrolled, and found this.
JOHN: Well, I had information that certain people were hunting waterfowl on the refuge.
I had let it be known that I would be out of town for a few days. I had the other agent
down here, Jim Williams, put me on Assateague. Then he took the boat away. I stayed
over all night and the next morning I was walking up a road that we had made and I saw
two men come out of the bushes. One man had a bag over his shoulder that I later found
had ducks in it. They both saw me and dropped the bag. They ran back in the bushes. I
went after them and about two or three hundred yards. One of the men, Walter Clark,
stopped and fired two shots at me from about the distance of fifteen yards. At that time,
I had blood in my eyes and so forth, and I couldn’t see too well. So, I gave up the chase.
I waited to see if they would come back to their boat. But the didn’t. So I finally got a
ride back to Chincoteague. Clark was later picked, tried in Federal Court, in Norfolk, and
convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He spent some time in jail.
MR. HALL: Even with something that drastic, it seems that he harbors no ill will to you
at all. He says he doesn’t.
JOHN: Apparently not.
MR. HALL: I guess you could say that time apparently repairs a lot.
JOHN: Well, it’s been forty-two years since that happened. Time kind of has a habit of
erasing a lot of things. I personally have no animosity towards Clark. And from what I
understand, he doesn’t have any animosity toward me. So that’s the way things are at
the present time.
MR. HALL: How do you feel? I’ve talked to a lot of people on this island when I left
here twenty-five years ago, but you have among one of the most outstanding reputations
of any person that ever lived in this area, and you were a Game Warden. Can you relate
those two things, from the years when it was tough to the present? How did you end up
that way?
JOHN: When I came on here, I came down here with the intention of enforcing the law to
the best of my ability. And I determined that it wouldn’t make any difference to me
whether a man didn’t have five cents in his pocket, or if he had five millions dollars. If he
was a violator, I’d catch him if I could! That was well known, and consequently there
were people who didn’t like me, but they respected me. I think it’s pretty much the
same way now, since I have moved back down here.
MR. HALL: It’s obvious that you feel very comfortable in this community.
JOHN: Oh Yeah!
MR. HALL: And it’s obvious that you are well respected. What’s the combination
there, John? This was probably one of the toughest areas in the country. The record
speaks for itself. There was probably more Game Wardens “salted” on Chincoteague
Island that any one place in America. Now, they all, and I think they are sincere, they
respected what you did then, and your continuing interest in trying to do what’s right for
the birds. That seems to impress everyone.
JOHN: Well, as far as I can see, that’s about the way it goes. I’ve been banding birds
now, since 1927, which will be sixty-two years in May. In that time, I have banded a
good number of birds. And a good many of them have been banded down here.
Generally, colonial nesting birds like the Skimmers, Terns and Gulls. A lot of people got
to see where they’d recognize me when I am out on the marsh. They’d toot their horns
and wave their hands and things like that, which I think shows a certain amount of
respect.
MR. HALL: It seemed like to me that the Agents in the old days were in the field more
than maybe we are today. I’ve been in the field a lot myself. I feel like with as few
Agents as we have, we have a real responsibility of selling ourselves first.
JOHN: That’s true.
MR. HALL: ..and what we stand for. How do you feel about that?
JOHN: I feel the same way. Personally, I have stayed out in the marsh over three nights.
I mean you were in a position where during the day, you could not raise your head above
the grass, working on some of the duck trappers. Sometimes we caught then, sometimes
we didn’t. It was a pretty rough and tough proposition. You were out there. You didn’t
know when you were going to get off. It was freezing cold weather. It was very, very
uncomfortable. And I think at the present time, I am getting some of the results of it in
the way my legs are working. I just can’t do the walking that I used to do.
MR. HALL: Part of this is that Cigar Daisey is going to go over to this international
Ducks Unlimited Symposium. If you were going to give a message to the people in
Ducks Unlimited today, what would you say to them?
JOHN: I would say to work for closure of the duck-hunting season for at least five years.
That is the only way that they are ever going to get the birds back. I think they’ve got a
goal of one hundred million birds, of ducks by 2000. If they don’t close the season,
they’re not going to have fifty million because the birds are going down so fast. I would
say that they should keep up their work, and not only spend their money in Canada. But
they should spend the money in the United States to a great extent.
MR. HALL: Using the words ‘Ducks Unlimited’, it sounds like you are saying, “I think
that Ducks Unlimited, in addition to the habitat”, what would you say to them about
ethics, hunting ethics. In other words, Ducks Unlimited in addition to habitat, what do
you say about ethics?
JOHN: Well, I think that they could clean up a lot of violations if they would police their
membership to a better extent. I have heard, and have no way to prove it, but they go to
Canada and shoot over the bag limits. They go to Mexico and they kill a lot of birds. By
showing a sort of indifference to the overall picture, they are not making a very good
impression on the other hunters. That’s my opinion.
MR. HALL: Do you have any comment, do you believe that if duck hunting is saved, the
major responsibility will financially and otherwise, be the duck hunters?
JOHN: Yes. I do. They should pay for it.
MR. HALL: You say that in your words.
JOHN: If we are going to save the resource, in my opinion, we are going to have to have a
closed season for at least five years. Now, I know that that is going to raise a lot of
political hassle. It’s going to raise a lot of opposition from the States, because they feel
that something like that is going to loose a certain amount of revenues. It’s the same way
with the Fish and Wildlife Service. They would loose a lot of duck stamp sales. But if
they don’t have the birds, why spend money on buying wetlands? You can’t have one
without the other.
MR. HALL: Do you think that the duck hunters will be the major group that will be
responsible for saving wetlands? And by doing so, saving duck hunting if it can be saved?
JOHN: Well, I don’t say that they are going to be the major one but they are going to
have a high responsibility. They are getting a lot of outside organizations now that are
really interested in wetlands. Those people are going to work as much as they can. And I
think it’s up to the duck hunters to assist them in what they are trying to do. As an
example, from Ocean City, north to above Rehoboth, used to be one of the prime black
duck hunting areas along the peninsula. Now you haven’t got a thing up there for
waterfowl. All you’ve got is condominiums and motels and things like that. Now, I
realize that you’ve got to depend on development and stuff like that but, development
can be done without destroying the wetlands. And I think it’s up to Ducks Unlimited
and other organizations to convince developers that they shouldn’t do things like that,
and if they persist; to see that there are laws that prevent them from doing it.
MR. HALL: In addition, what should Ducks Unlimited do with their members about
obeying the laws?
JOHN: Well, to begin with, as I say, police their membership better than they are. I
think that if some of the members are caught in violations that they should be expelled
from the organization. Of course, there again, you run into the money proposition.
MR. HALL: In your years of working as a Law Enforcement Agent, give me your
estimation of how many so called sportsmen that you saw that would shoot over the
limit or disobey the waterfowl regulations?
JOHN: Well, I would say that eight-five percent of your average hunter will break the
law in some way, at some time. Now, we had what we called a “spy blind”. Do you
remember that? I was really surprised.
MR. HALL: You saw that?
JOHN: I saw it. I am not estimating at all. I am going by what I saw. At that time I was
up in New York. Seneca Lake was one of the prime waterfowl hunting areas in my part
of the State. I have watched so called “good hunters”, shoot their limit, come ashore, hide
the birds and go back; shoot another limit and come back and hide the birds.
MR. HALL: Do you think that this is a social problem where there has been very little
negative peer pressure exerted on duck hunters from their peers to obey the law?
JOHN: I think that’s about in a class with the automobile driver speeding. The law is
there, but you ride by yourself; you don’t think there is anybody around, so you take the
chance. I don’t think there has been any amount of so-called peer pressure to reduce it.
They go out and they hunt and they come back with birds and they talk with the
neighbors, “Well, I had a good day today. It was a good shoot, want some?” That’s the
way it goes.
MR. HALL: I agree. Tell me about how you feel today.
JOHN: Well today, I feel like all of the State Game Wardens, all the Federal Game
Wardens, all of the Audubon societies and the people that vote on Washington stuff; if
they don’t get behind them draining the wetlands and over-killing the fowl, they ain’t
going to have no birds! That’s it. And just like I told you, in all of this bent grass we call
it, the saw grass, at this time of the years a few years back, there would have been a pair
of black ducks or a pair of little mallards in every little pond. Later on, the gander, he
nests later on, like May,

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RECORDING OF VIDEO TAPED INTERVIEW
WITH CIGAR DAISEY MARCH 23, 1989
BY DAVE HALL
ALSO, COMMENTS BY CLARENCE MCKENNEY
AND GEORGE LAYCOCK, OTHERS UNIDENTIFIED
MR. DAISEY: …and they started draining the glades, see? They dug ditches right down
through the center of this island. They drained out them breakwater glades. They did the
same thing with any low place, they dug a ditch out. That was the beginning of hurting
the island, you know. But, those ditches that they dug out filled up in later years. And
then, along come the tourists. When the tourists come the skeeters [mosquitoes] would
bite on of them once in a while. They weren’t about to put up with that. It was all right
for them to eat up the native people. But you can’t bite them tourists. Then, they dug
‘em out again. Where were we again on the…?
MR. HALL: When you were a little boy how did the people live?
MR. DAISEY: The people lived tough. I mean, nobody had nuthin. I don’t know of
anybody that had anything. I lived with an old lady. She wasn’t my aunt, but she was
my aunt. She married my uncle. He died, and I lived with her. My mother was still
living I just didn’t live at home with her.
MR. HALL: Was your daddy a trapper and a hunter?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah.
MR. HALL: What was your daddy’s name?
MR. DAISEY: Herbert.
MR. HALL: Herbert Daisey.
MR. HALL: Yeah. He trapped a little bit. And he raised poultry. He went in the
poultry business in the 1930s, about ’34 or ’35. At one time he had about a million
capacity or more three time a year, of poultry. That was the only industry there was
other than seafood. But the [unintelligible] system destroyed that. The feed man and the
chicken man. Before you knowed it they owned it all, and the poor man got kicked out of
that.
MR. HALL: When did you first start hunting?
MR. DAISEY: Dave, I was so little, I don’t know. All I can tell you is this; the big deal
was to foller after the bigger boys in the glades. We’d go to Dave Metterin’s Country
Store, old county store. You could by three shells for ten cents. Monarchs, I can see ‘em
right plain in the box. You’d get three of ‘em for ten cents. The boys would take an old
double-barreled gun, buy ‘em three shells and go for the glade. And the little boys like me
would foller behind him, you know what I mean? That’s the first of me hunting. So little
it was pitiful. Then the day come, I want to shoot. I was so small, it would kick. If the
big boys would let you shoot once in a while, you’d get the hell kicked out of you. You
know what I mean? That was a big deal you know. No body could knock you down. I
remember the first [sounds like] yellow legs I ever shot. I shot them with a four hundred
and ten. I killed three, first shot. I kilt some muskrats and sold the fur and bought this
gun for nine dollars. The first time a shot her, I killed three yeller legs and I never did kill
three with her from that day since. That was good to kill three at one time. I guess I
lucked out with that first shot. See? We’d go back in them glades right there in the middle
of this island and shoot yeller legs all day long. You could just hunt out in that glade like
you wouldn’t believe, all day long. Even in the spring, Blue Winged Teal was in there.
We’d shoot Blue Winged Teal you know.
MR. HALL: What does duck hunting, and being in this marsh mean to you?
MR. DAISEY: Well, it was a way of life, trapping and hunting and fishing. You might
say it was my boyhood dreams. I mean, that’s all I thought about. I’d go to sleep at
night and the last thing you could see was the hunting and trapping and fishing. That was
the only thing we minded. I will say today, in all fairness, that I’ve done exactly, I
fulfilled, in other words, I’ve done it that much where it really don’t mean that much to
me any more. I am satisfied.
MR. HALL: But you want to help make it better?
MR. DAISEY: I’d like to see ducks for everybody, for my grand younguns, for
younguns in the future. I’d like to see everybody still be able to go duck hunting
whenever they wanted to. With reasonable laws, and a reasonable limit. I believe it can
still be done. But I believe you’ve got to make some tough choices when it comes to
progress. I was born a Democrat under Roosevelt, I guess. That’s all I know. I staid that
way ‘til Lyndon Johnson. And After Lyndon Johnson, I become a Republican. But let
me tell you somethin’, the last eight years they ain’t done a damn thing, as far as I’m
concerned for the environment! The Republicans haven’t. That’s the way I feel about it.
I think they’ve let us down there. Anything concerning progress, I think they say go
ahead and do it.
MR. HALL: What is progress?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I think it’s something that you do slowly, and you don’t feel it all
at one time. You know? It’s going to happen. We know it’s going to happen. I don’t
think you can stop it completely. But I think you’ve just got to slow down to the point
where a little change takes place, and not no real abrupt one. If it does, why, I think
that’s why all the hellfire is. [?] And you have to change people’s way of life too, when
you do that. The whole way of life changes. Recently, they passed a law around here
where they won’t let ‘em drag no more with their boats in the inside limit. I think that’s
wrong. Because they’re gonna drag ‘em in North Carolina. And boys really wasn’t
catching that many fish. It’s the same thing with fish laws and duck laws. It’s all the
same. The people that makes ‘em ninety percent of the time really don’t know what the
hell they’re doing. I don’t know what the answer to it is. I mean, ain’t many people
want to be a politician anymore anyway. Enough people looks down on ‘em.
MR. HALL: How do you feel about the fact the government and wildlife organizations
need to be talking more to the people? More communications?
MR. DAISEY: I think that that’s the most important thing that they could do. Is to
have better relations with the public. But, if it means satisfying the public, like for
instance this refuge, if it means they’ve got to be buddy-buddy with these, first thing
they do with a man that comes here it try to get next to him. The local business people
on this island. There may be fifteen of ‘em on this island. They try to get close to him,
be good friends with him. They want to sway him for the things that they want the use
of this refuge. That is not the kind of public relations I am interested in. This refuge
belongs to everybody, these two hundred and thirty or fifty million people that live in
this country. It belongs to everybody. It don’t belong to the fifteen business people on
Chincoteague Island. As far as I’m concerned, they ought not to have that damned much
to say about it.
MR. HALL: What about the ducks?
MR. DAISEY: What do you mean?
MR. HALL: How do they fit in to all of this?
MR. DAISEY: Well, the ducks has been…we just casted them aside. We’ve not
considered the ducks. I mean, uh, if you spend your money chasin’ tourists up and
down, for feeding and all that kind of stuff, you certainly ain’t spendin’ it on ducks.
There’s things could be done, improvements. But one part of the government is against
the other part of the government like for instance, impoundments, you understand that.
Many things can be done. You can plant a lot of duck food to make duck fat and healthy
so when you leave everything’s in good shape when you go back. There’s so many
things that they could do. But all the money’s spent on tourists. That’s the only thing
they got goin’ on.
MR. HALL: Cigar, tell me in your own words important wetlands and the heritage of
ducks, not only to this island here, in other words, how important is this to the American
people of the future?
MR. DAISEY: I think it’s the whole background of the whole country. I mean, it is
America. It’s the only…our duck hunting was unique. It didn’t happen, I mean decoys
and things like that didn’t happen in other countries like it did here. Hunting was a way
of life I guess. Fur trappin’ and is just about as old next to prostitution I guess. It’s a
way of life, and it’s slowly been destroyed through progress. And I don’t think violation
is a big deal. There’s been a lot of violations. But you know yourself that if ducks don’t
have a place to nest and rest, you ain’t got no ducks. Now, [unintelligible] said, I read an
article by him in Sports Afield magazine. He said ‘water didn’t mean ducks.’ But I
disagree with [sounds like] Mr. Wright.
MR. HALL: That means ducks, if you don’t have breeding ducks. That’s what he’s
saying. If you don’t have any breeders…
MR. DAISEY: Well, we’re gonna have a few breeding ducks. We’re always gonna have a
few anyway. But that water, I think, is what we better concentrate on more than any one
thing.
MR. HALL: Yeah, but what he’s saying is that there’s areas in Canada that I am familiar
with that have had good water and there’s no breeding ducks on it. You look out, I’m
going to tell you, the worst disaster in my life was when I moved from the Mississippi
Flyway to the Atlantic Flyway. Heck, you hadn’t had any ducks up here in two hundred
years! Compared to what I know to be ducks.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
MR. HALL: When I came up here to the Chesapeake Bay, and what I saw, I said, “My
God, they don’t have any ducks up here!” And you now, you know that we will more
ducks in Louisiana every year than winter in the entire Atlantic Flyway?
MR. DAISEY: I don’t doubt it.
MR. HALL: And what bothers me is that now it’s gotten to where they want to start
releasing Mallards. What do you think of that?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I don’t know of no alternative. I don’t know what else you can do.
I don’t know if for instance, if this year Mother Nature is cruel to you again, what are
you going to do? Are you gonna have a season next year? I don’t think you should have
a season. I think you should close it for a year or two and try it out. But I’m scared if
you close it it will never open again like they done to shore birds. The “antis” [people
against hunting] will put so much pressure on you it’ll never be open again. So, I am real
frustrated and mixed up too, about what’s best. I think that you may have to sooner or
later go to the Mallard. You may just have to have a Mallard season for a number of
years.
MR. HALL: But they shouldn’t be able to shoot the so-called other wild ducks claiming
that that’s part of their…
MR. DAISEY: Oh no. No, I think if you go to the Mallard, I think you better shoot the
Mallard, the ones that you raised. And just let it go at that. That’s what they do in
Europe don’t they? Don’t they raise a lot of birds? Don’t they got a system?
MR. HALL: Well how do you feel about that? You know, the local people here, you’ve
felt on this island that hunting was a God given right. It was a privilege that should be
enjoyed by all the people. How do you feel about just a few, select people being able to
hunt?
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s the way it will eventually amount to, and I’ll tell you why I
say that; we never had no deer til about 1960 on the mainland. That was the beginning of
the deer. And now we got oodles of ‘em. And now, I good go over there hunting,
anywhere I want to, no Posted signs. Now, it’s Posted, and rented to somebody from
New Jersey. The pulp and paper company, they rent all the earth to the people from
New Jersey. The local people get shut right out. They take it over. There’s really no
place in the State of Virginia, on Accomack County where you can go hunt on the
mainland where the deer are but what somebody don’t own. So there again, you create a
violation situation. You see a big old buck in somebody’s field, you shoot him anyway,
the hell with him. You know, you just go ahead and shoot him. Then you’ve violated the
law, see? It’s hard, and it seems like the state is worse than the federal government when
it comes to Wardens and the way they run things. I mean, if they can’t get you for, if
they come to you for hunting and you weren’t hunting, they’ll get you for a hole in your
life preserver or something else. You know what I mean? Some damn thing, that little
teeny old thing that don’t really matter to a whole hell of a lot, as far as I’m concerned.
MR. HALL: What do you thing about having more simple laws?
MR. DAISEY: I think they should be simple, real simple, with the limits spelled out so
it won’t be no mistakes. And like you say, if you catch a man and he’s what you call a
real; there’s a real difference in a man that makes a mistake and a real violator. I think the
law pretty well can tell the difference. If you do want to take a man’s license, do it. But
don’t hand a man a little teeny old fine for a little teeny old thing that don’t amount to a
damn. I mean, really, it’s just an inconvenience to you cause you’ve got to appear agin
him if he don’t send it in.
MR. HALL: Please identify yourself again.
MR. DAISEY: My name is Delbert L. Daisey. I live in Chincoteague my entire lifetime.
MR. HALL: Where is that?
MR. DAISEY: It’s a little island off the coast of Virginia, where a lot of greedy people
live. A lot of greedy business people live here.
MR. HALL: How come you talk the way you do Cigar?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I tell it like a see it.
MR. HALL: I am talking about your accent. Where did that come from?
MR. DAISEY: God only knows. I really don’t know. You see? When I went to school
if you talked proper, people would make fun at you. They would say, ‘he’s getting to be
a smart ass!’ That was the way people did. So, you talk like they did I guess. You took
to talking like they did.
MR. HALL: Now on this island, when I lived here, they had different little groups and
cliques. They had [sounds like] “snotty ridge” and they had “deep hole”.
MR. DAISEY: I was raised on snotty ridge. I was raised down on snotty ridge, right
next to the water. Yep. It’s so much difference that I can’t sit here and explain it to you
see? The way this island once was, and the way it is today. And I look for it to be worse
tomorrow. See, the more people that they allow on that refuge…to start with, the Park
Service should never’ve been on there. The Park Service should’ve never been on there
because all they dream about is tourists. When I am over there predator trapping, they
got a little place down here, I [don’t] dare from getting anywhere close to that, trapping
because its against the law to set a trap on Park Service property. When I come to the
Maryland line that barbed wire fence, I have to stop. It’s Park Service from there on. It’s
barbed wire fence from there on. What’s going to stop coons and foxes from coming on
underneath there? Coming on down the beach? It’s a big joke! The way we do things,
it’s a big joke. I don’t know how you’d cure all these things.
MR. HALL: You’ve done real well carving these decoys.
MR. DAISEY: Oh, that’s just how I make a small living, carving decoys.
MR. HALL: You survive though?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, I make a small, surviving living.
MR. HALL: But that ties into the ducks again.
MR. DAISEY: Oh yeah. I still feel I’m close to the ducks, you know what I mean?
From making things and going to the shows and judging and what have you. I really enjoy
it. And I’m too damn old to do anything else now, but do some artwork.
MR. HALL: You can’t run from the game wardens anymore, anyway!
MR. DAISEY: I sure as hell can’t, ain’t even gonna try runnin’ from him. ‘Cause I ain’t
gonna do nothin’ wrong. Ain’t no need to try and run, ‘cause I can’t do nuthin’ anyway!
MR. HALL: Tell me what was going through your mind, say, when you and Newman
would load up at ten o’clock at night and make a run up the island. What was going
through your mind? What were you doing that for? Of all the things, as you look back
now, why did you do that?
MR. DAISEY: For whatever the intended purposes were. I mean, if we was going deer
hunting, we went deer hunting. And we just didn’t…we figured we wouldn’t see nobody,
won’t nobody to bother us, and nobody would know about it. And we accomplished
what we set out to do without having any problems.
MR. HALL: If you were going to do night gunning ducks, you…?
MR. DAISEY: The same way.
MR. HALL: You’d night gun ducks. Well tell me about that. I mean, what… I am
looking for…was it a thrill there, to beat the system?
MR. DAISEY: I think it might have been in the latter years. But in the beginning it
wasn’t.
MR. HALL: Tell me, you talk about beating the system however you want to put it.
Just talk about that and how you felt.
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would say in the very beginning you didn’t know nothing about
the system. You really wasn’t out to beat nobody. But when they send fifteen or
twenty game wardens in here on me fifteen or twenty times. And I knew that I couldn’t
beat it so the only sensible thing for me to do would be to just close right down til they
left. See? That’s what I would do. I would close down. I figured that just they minute
they left and went away, I go back trapping again, see? Because I knew I couldn’t…there
wasn’t no need to keep going while they were here. One on one they’ll getcha. They’ll
getcha like that. If you take one game warden and forty or fifty people, he’s got a hell of
a job to keep up with you. There ain’t no way he can… You have so very few law
enforcement officers. I’ve seen, I’ve been checked three or four times, say, in fifty years.
In fifty years, I’ve been checked three or four times. So we’ve not really had it that bad
around here.
MR. HALL: How many times do you reckon in your life you’ve violated the waterfowl
laws?
MR. DAISEY: I violated it two or three times a day, from the first frost ‘til March I’d
say. Two or three times a day.
MR. HALL: How many times were you caught and convicted?
MR. DAISEY: I was never caught neither time, but I was convicted once. I paid a
$75.00 fine in 1953 I believe it was…’52. [sounds like] Ralph Harrison turned me too.
Chased me in a airplane all day long. And he carried me to court. They had my trial.
Never give me no chance, I had no lawyer. On Saturday evening… Today, they’d run
you out of the courthouse if you came around with a case like that. He charged me for
endangering government property ‘cause I run from him. Possession of migratory game
birds, he never seen a durn one I had. I only had one, and the damn [unintelligible] got
him. So, he certainly didn’t see him. And carrying a concealed weapon, I had a pocket
knife in my pocket. It was over a three inch blade. Then I had a trappers permit the
season went out on the 15th of March or something like that. So I had the right to have
that really.
MR. HALL: Tell me about the feeling when you were trying to use your skills to outdo
the game wardens. Was that part of the reason that you, in the later years….?
MR. DAISEY: I went to a lot of trouble. I went to a lot of trouble. In other words, I’d
always, …a red fox and smart, but he’d scared. And I was scared he would get me. I
kept that in mind. I always said that you could get me if you do it right. And I always
figured when I went to a trap where you would be, when I picked out a place where I was
going to trap, I always figured that…here’s a think little place over here, and here’s where
I’m gonna look for you to be when I come here.
MR. HALL: Looking for the game warden?
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. I always figured out these places so that I would have the
edge. I wanted all the edge I could get. For years and years they never had no big motors.
Then along about 1960, they started buying them great big motors, and boats you know.
They could run you down then. It were different. They just figured their mind up that
they were going to break it up and they done it.
MR. HALL: But they didn’t break up the sport hunting violations?
MR. DAISEY: No. The sport hunting violations, the law would be some of it. But I
don’t think it’s as bad as what people think. I don’t think it’s really that serious.
MR. HALL: There’s not enough ducks.
MR. DAISEY: No! Most people don’t even get a shot to start with, when they go any
more, unless it’s one of them good days.
MR. HALL: The Atlantic Flyway is in real trouble when it comes to the numbers of
ducks.
MR. DAISEY: I would say so. I would say it’s… As a matter of fact, there used to be
black ducks all the way down this peninsula, seventy miles of it. And there was some
hot spots where they’d be so thick it was pitiful. You go in them areas today, and you
won’t find any.
MR. HALL: I want to ask you about the importance of the hunters today, because the
ducks are so scarce. It’s important that the hunters today, obey the laws. It used to not
make that much difference if the guys went out there and shot lots of ducks, baited the
whole lot and shot all of them, it probably didn’t make as much difference. But today,
with as few ducks as there are, if the sportsmen; one of the things they can do including
the habitat.. is to have reasonable simple regulations and the sportsmen should obey
them. In other words, you wouldn’t go out there and disobey the laws now?
MR. DAISEY: No, I wouldn’t go out there today and shoot a sack full of ducks. I
definitely wouldn’t. I think it’s wrong. I see nothing wrong if a man goes killing a mess if
he’s got a big family. If he kills one or two more than he ought to, or something like that.
I’m not going to frown on that. I’m not frowning on the way the Indian hunted all across
this country. If you hunt like that. I am more in favor of the Indian hunter than I am the
sport hunter. Like I want a deer, I’ll go kill me a deer and I’ll eat that deer. And when
he’s gone, and I want me another one, I’d go kill me another one, and I’d eat that deer. I
don’t really frown on that. Waste, just for sport…[feels it’s bad]
MR. HALL: What you do say when you talk to the sports? What would like to tell
them about obeying the laws?
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would say that you should do as good as you can. I mean, if you
are tempted to shoot over the limit, why, I think you should stay out of an area where
there is a one duck limit. Like with black ducks and things like that. It would be awful
easy to make a mistake, shoot two ducks. Nowadays black ducks and mallard are all
mixed up. What do you call a black duck, Dave?
MR. HALL: I want to get back to the mentality of a guy, when he goes out there, wants
to obey the law, do you think that that’s important today?
MR. DAISEY: Yes, I do think it’s important.
MR. HALL: Tell me that in your own words. See? I don’t want to be in this interview.
I want you talking.
MR. DAISEY: Well I think anybody goes hunting should obey the laws really. And I
think if you’re gonna have this hunt, I think it ought to be done…you ought to have a
little but more limits that what you got. Or, you ought to close it, one or the other.
Because you’ve got a man…he can easily get carried away with it. Look, you know
yourself, if you like duck hunting and you shoot one, and another one coming out to you,
it’s hard as hell not to shoot the other one. You’re really up agin it. You’ve got to have a
lot of will power. So, as far as going out and killing forty and fifty ducks or something
like that, man should be prosecuted for that, no doubt about that. That’s just too damn
many, this day and time. I agreed with you. I don’t think that happens much any more.
MR. HALL: Well, it can’t up here. It does down our way. We get guys that kill two
hundred a day!
MR. DAISEY: Well, you ought to take him damn license and you wouldn’t have to
worry about it.
MR. HALL: Last year it didn’t happen because we hit ‘em hard in the news media.
Now the lawyers and doctors are talking about, they did it but they shouldn’t do it any
more. That’s what we’re trying to do. If we’re going to have hunting, we’re going to
have the hunter obey the rules. And they have to do it because the want to. What do
you say about…there’ll never be enough game wardens. You told me you hunted illegally
every day and you never really got caught, and you only got checked three times. So
there’s never going to be enough game wardens. What do you say about that?
MR. DAISEY: You can’t have enough game wardens. But they could be seen a little bit
more. That would help. In other words, if man rides through there in a boat and he sees
the Fish and Wildlife man, there won’t be no game violations happening around in that
area. That would keep ‘em honest, just the sight of them.
MR. HALL: They need to be in the field more.
MR. DAISEY: They don’t do nothing else but take a car and a boat and ride around this
island. They say, “hey, I saw the game warden, you’d better look out!” See? It will
stop him. It will keep you honest. This duck situation is complicated because the
progress is destroying us and like you said, the hunter’s not done his part either. In a lot
of ways he’s not done his part.
MR. HALL: He’s done his part in putting up his money to buy land to support those
things, but as far as obeying the rules, he’s not really thought it that wrong.
MR. DAISEY: No. That’s true, he don’t really think it’s that wrong.
MR. HALL: Getting back to when you were sport guiding out there; Did any
hunters…tell me what happened in the blind. Did they ever talk about how they ought to
obey the rules here? Or, we should never shoot over the limit. Did you ever hear
anybody saying that?
MR. DAISEY: The only person that I would hear, would tell you off hand, that “lord,
we don’t want to violate no laws,” would be the newspaperman, the sports writer. It
was his job. It meant is job.
MR. HALL: You guided…who did you guide?
MR. DAISEY: I guided men like from the Baltimore Sun, what was his name, Bill
Burton? Bertchet. Different ones. Some of them are passed on, long since passed on I
know now. Anyway, a lot of good men. They didn’t violate the law. They did not do it.
I occasionally find…
MR. HALL: Who was the ones that would do it?
MR. DAISEY: The younger people.
MR. HALL: Would they be professionals, doctors, lawyers?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, they would be. It didn’t make any difference as far as the
education of the people. I don’t think that makes any difference. Most people, they
look at it this way; they maybe get to go one or two times a year. So what the hell? I
ain’t going every day to kill two or three ducks. So I’ll kill maybe eight on ten today, and
won’t go no more this year. That’s the way a lot of people figure. I’ve heard a lot of
people say if you give ‘em spring shell ducking season they’d pay $25.00 for to go shell
ducking in the spring and to hell with the rest of the duck season. How’s that sound to
do? We know never get to shoot these [sounds like] merganders. People, a lot of them
would ten times rather shoot them than to shoot a duck, you know.
MR. HALL: And down in Louisiana, they wouldn’t even bother to waste a shell on ‘em.
They’ve got a lot of them. But up here they eat them don’t they?
MR. DAISEY: You’ve better believe it. And you’d better believe that you could sell
license at just about any price you wanted, the Division of Wildlife could, on mergander
hunting. Myself, I would be willing to hunt no duck of no kind, and just shoot mergander
in the spring of the year. I would go for that.
MR. HALL: Why is that? Do you like to eat them?
MR. DAISEY: Well, not necessarily like to eat him, but he’s sporty, and he’s purdy.
And I’m not goin’ to shoot that many of them no way, four or five of them, you know.
Being as I don’t get to do any of it at all, I probably would enjoy that…listen, there’s
nothing in the world easier to kill than a black duck coming to you. A black duck, or a
mallard is the easiest thing in the world I know to kill. I know, I’ve shot enough of them
in my lifetime. I am satisfied it I don’t…maybe to get one or two to eat or something like
that. But that’s about all I want from now on.
MR. HALL: Is Dave Daisey’s grave on Assateague?
MR. DAISEY: I don’t know where it is, to tell you the truth. I don’t know.
MR. HALL: Is that old cemetery still over there?
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, it’s an old cemetery in Bill Scott’s yard, but I don’t know whose
buried there. You can’t really tell.
MR. HALL: Well tell me some of the other old families that are native to Chincoteague.
MR. DAISEY: Well, there’s so many on them, I don’t really know who the oldest ones
are. To tell you the truth, I don’t know who the oldest families is on here. I know the
Daiseys have been here, the Thorntons, Burches. I tell you where the Burches come
from…they were probably one of the oldest families. They come from North Beach.
They set them ashore down at North Beach off of one of them ships probably 1700 or
something. They went ashore there and put up a salt works. Right there in Green Run
woods. That was probably the oldest family there is. They called them ‘up the beach
Burches’ because they come from up the beach. That’s what they used to call them.
MR. HALL: How important was ducking hunting to all of the people on the island?
MR. DAISEY: It was a way of life. It was a way of food, a way to make some money.
It was just part of living in a vicinity like this. It was a big help to them people. It’d give
you something to eat on Sunday.
[Mr. Hall changes videotapes, and tells Mr. Daisey what the plan is for going over to the
island, for more of his visit and for working on editing the taped interview contents.]
MR. DAISEY: Cut all the bad things out! If I get too hard on the Fish and Wildlife, cut
it out.
MR. HALL: I’m not going to put you in any position. Other than the fact that
progress…you’re absolutely right, see, you know more about, as a lay person about
what’s going on in this world; living on this little bitty island, almost isolated than most
of them goddamned people in Washington, D.C. know about, who’s supposed to be
running this country!
Side B, tape 1
MR. HALL: I’m just going let you guys sit there and talk.
[two new people join conversation, Mr. Clarence McKenney and Mr. George Laycock]
MR. MCKENNEY: …that program didn’t cost the government anything either. We
furnished the pickup truck, and gasoline and everything anyway didn’t we?
MR. DAISEY: We furnished the whole works.
MR HALL: This is a friend of mine. His name is George Laycock. He’s a writer. He’s
written lots of books. He just gave me a book this morning.
MR. DAISEY: I believe I’ve seen some of your books!
MR. HALL: He’s written about mountain men, and bears and everything.
MR. LAYCOCK: I am a field editor for Audubon Magazine too. That’s one of the
things I do.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, the name sounds familiar.
MR. HALL: He and I have been running mates for a long time.
MR. DAISEY: How about this Audubon deal…Audubon’s come out on record about
this refuge? You know all about that I’m sure.
MR. LAYCOCK: Well, I don’t know all about it. I remember reading it.
MR. DAISEY: They mentioned Kestrel and this one and different ones all up and down
was real endangered. I’d like to know a little bit more about their opinions. How would
you find out? Would you write them?
MR. LAYCOCK: Yeah. They have regional representatives, people who work this area.
I am in New York. I can give you the address.
MR. MCKENNEY: You know, we’re probably more fortunate than a lot of people are
in a lot of these states. We still have quite a bit of marshland, especially here on this
Eastern Shore between the sea side and the Bay side both.
MR. DAISEY: We got all the marshland, but we got no mainland.
MR HALL: We’ve got to get you guys to come down to Louisiana and spend about a
week with me down in the marsh. I’d like for you to see that. I mean, we’re losing it
down there fast. It’s pitiful. But it’s so big, still, for you to comprehend, being a marsh
person, you’d just be staggered at how much there is and we’re losing it. Aw, it’s just
pitiful! The damn coastal erosion is just eating our lunch for us.
MR. DAISEY: It’s just eroding the coast from the Gulf?
MR. HALL: Yeah, the damn salt intrusion and natural subsidents, all kinds of problems.
MR. DAISEY: Well, did it have anything to do with the oil companies?
MR. HALL: Oh yeah, they have a lot to do with it. It seems like if you talk about
progress, this was so short lifed, as far as what good it did for the people, the harm that
it’s going to do to the seafood industry, and to the culture and the way of life, people
aren’t even going to be able to live in southern Louisiana in the next fifty years.
MR. DAISEY: It always seems that you get something and as soon as you do you want
some more.
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s the same way here.
MR. HALL: I mean, they’re going to be under water. There ain’t going to be anything.
We’re losing forty square miles of marsh a year.
MR. MCKENNEY: Good God! The oil companies don’t give a damn about anything.
MR. LAYCOCK: The old companies have no conscience on that. They don’t care about
fifty years from now. We’ve got some of that on a small scale here, with some of our,
whatever you want to call them. They have just gotten busy starting up a few dollars,
now they can’t get enough.
MR: DAISEY: That’s what I’m talking about, about progress. That’s what does it.
Take two or three men or a few.
MR. LAYCOCK: You said the same thing happened down at Harker’s Island didn’t it?
MR: DAISEY: That’s what I was telling just now; (unintelligible) was five miles long,
but I’ve seen what happened there.
MR. LAYCOCK: Well, personally I certainly agree with what you were saying about
the over use of these refuges by people who don’t go because the wildlife is there. They
go because the sun is there, or the sand is there, or they want to get away from the cities
or whatever.
MR. MCKENNEY: I big problem we had when we were over there trapping was
keeping damn people out of our traps. You know, they were in areas where they really
weren’t supposed to be.
MR. DAISEY: We were with the Manager and the Manager would have to drive them
out. One or two times we’d ride up there with him and here they’d be. He said, “You
know you ain’t belong to be up here! Leave, go that way!” It won’t be long before they
send our way!
MR. MCKENNEY: We trapped over there more or less, nothing illegal. Just keep the
general public [out]. They see a trap, or a leg-hole trap, they go crazy. They think it
shouldn’t be on a refuge. We tried to keep it quiet.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. That’s what I had to do. I had to hide my traps. I had to
stay away from the people, and not let them see no animals. I had one man see one
animal, didn’t we?
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, some fellow was there with a camera.
MR. DAISEY: He was there with a damn camera, taking pictures of that animal. That
was the only one we seen. Being as I had trapped it illegal all of my life, I was used to it.
Used to trying to stay away from people, see? It worked out pretty good.
MR. MCKENNEY: I don’t think they ever had any complaints on it, unless it was one
or two local people who thought they ought to be there instead of us, you know. I think
that’s the only real complaint they ever had on it. But we kept it quiet. We figured it
would be, well; we didn’t want Dennis to get in any trouble especially.
MR. DAISEY: No, we didn’t want nobody to get in any trouble.
MR. MCKENNEY: …over the trapping deal. I know one thing, it’d do a hell of a lot of
good for that refuge as far as raising fowl, if they’d get some water over there.
MR. HALL: That’s right.
MR. DAISEY: Hey, what’d you hear they get when they poisoned them foxes that
time? Your dog got killed didn’t he? Didn’t he get poisoned or something?
MR. HALL: Ooh! Goddamn we got in all kind of trouble!
MR. DAISEY: Did you?
MR. HALL: We weren’t supposed to have done it. I killed my own dog what that
goddamned stuff, my Lab. There was one little piece of it underneath the deep freeze
there in the office. My dog got it. I realized as soon as I saw it that that dog was done
for. Before I could get him to the Vet he was gone.
MR. DAISEY: That ball [of poison] shouldn’t have been there. Your people making
them balls. They shouldn’t have been making them.
MR. LAYCOCK: Were they spreading poisoned bait?
MR. HALL: They were putting them out of airplanes.
MR. DAISEY: See?
MR. HALL: I can tell you what we did. The next year we produced three thousand
ducks on that refuge. That’s what we were doing.
MR. MCKENNEY: I found a lot of foxes up there around where we hunted up there at
Billy Goat Cove, and them places.
MR. DAISEY: It still can be done today. It can be done, but not like they done it, see?
What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to go down there and dig a little hole, get the fox to
come in to that hole, like a regular sent station. Get him coming there regularly, then you
go there at the last minute and put your little ball [poison] there. Well, he’d dead. And
you keep enough places like that, you kill them, every damn one and nobody knows
what’s happening.
MR. HALL: The way we got in trouble was that we did it without having the damn
approval. It didn’t make any difference if that we were doing what was right for the
ducks. We knew that the way the bureaucracy operated, if we asked for permission,
they’d never let us do it!
MR. DAISEY: Well, I would be opposed to doing it like that. I tell you why I be
opposed to doing it like that; flying over there and dropping it, or just throwing them out
around everywhere. It was because it was possible that the birds of prey could get one of
them.
MR. HALL: We killed a few seagulls, but that was the only birds that we killed.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well, they need some killing.
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, if you killed every damn one of them, it’d be a good deal? I told
the Regional Director here one day, or at the other place; I was gonna get every damn one
I met up with. I despise them!
MR. MCKENNEY: We watched them wipe out a whole load of Marsh Hens one day
didn’t we? We declared war on them!
MR. DAISEY: We were sitting down drinking a beer one day and it was thirteen Marsh
Hens. In two or three days time they had them down to one. They eat every damn one
of them Marsh Hens! I said, “One of these days, goddamn if we don’t get them. So we
got us a heap of shells, and we got full of beer and we got a big old chair sitting back there.
And damn if we didn’t smoke them big old herring gulls. We give them a shooting to go
away from home!
MR. MCKENNEY: They stayed away from there for a while didn’t they?!
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe they did. Some man, a bird watcher lived two or
three houses down below here. He said he didn’t know what in the hell was going on over
there. He said that all he seen was a gull falling out the air every time he looked!
MR. MCKENNEY: He said, “I knew there was a good reason for you boys to be
shooting them gulls, but I couldn’t figure out what it was!” [Laughing]
MR. DAISEY: I told him, “I am goddamned mad at those sons of bitches, they eat that
whole damn bunch of Marsh Hens, every last one of then!”
MR. MCKENNEY: Boy, they did! Ate ‘em right out! And that mother hen would go
right for ‘em. They pass and the little ones would dive, and she’d go right for ‘em but
they didn’t pay no attention to her.
MR. DAISEY: I despise them damned old herring gulls!
MR: LAYCOCK: There’s too darned many of them.
MR. DAISEY: There’s something else that’s got to be done! See? There’s the President
right there, or the Fish and Wildlife, ain’t nobody coming out or saying nothing about it.
Why don’t they take him off the protected list? He’s protected ain’t he Dave?
MR. HALL: Yep. If we did that the damn people would go out there and just shoot ‘em
for the hell of it.
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s what we want! We want to shoot ‘em for the hell of it! [All
laugh].
MR. MCKENNEY: Big bird would cut them down some, the gulls would.
MR. DAISEY: Well look! The Regional Director told me they bust their eggs up there in
Maine, and what’s the difference in that? I guess you don’t know nothin’ about it
unlessen they had told you about it. But he told me they done it.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well ain’t these boys a putting it on them down where the
(unintelligible) are? [sounds like piping plumbers]
MR. DAISEY: I don’t know what they’re doing down there.
MR. MCKENNEY: Somebody told me they were going to put it on the gulls whenever
they seen any and shoot ‘em.
MR. DAISEY: As far as I’m concerned the gull ain’t no good to us. We got more that we
need of them. We’ve got billions and billions of ‘em.
MR. MCKENNEY: Well he’ll eat more of them eggs than that raccoon, I expect.
MR. DAISY: That’s right! There’s so many of them, the numbers is so high. That’s the
thing of it!
MR. MCKENNEY: I know one thing, he’ll eat ‘em. He don’t mind eating a live one.
Gobble them little Marsh Hens right down, them little black bitties.
MR. DAISEY: I’d say he’s really and truly the number one predator on any young bird.
I’d say that right now the Herring Gull is the number one predator. A Black Back is
worse but the numbers ain’t that bad.
MR. MCKENNEY: Bill called and told us he saw them going right in them rookeries and
eating them little birds, the Egrets and things.
MR. DAISEY: He seen ‘em go right in the rookery and get em right out of the nest and
go set out off on the flat and eat em like there wasn’t nothing to it.
MR. MCKENNEY: They eat ever bird that gets over the ocean. They eat the last one.
I’ve watched them run them down. When he gets out and he gets tired. He’ll eat every
one of them if they gets out over the ocean.
MR. LAYCOCK: They are old herring gulls, is what we call them.
MR. DAISEY: I guess if he gets tired, I guess he just runs him right down.
MR. MCKENNEY: He’ll run em right down. I’ve watched them eat them every day.
MR. HALL: Hey, Cigar, be carving on that little head there a little bit. [Mr. Daisey is
working on a decoy as the conversation progresses. The scraping sounds can be heard.]
MR.LAYCOCK: When is that trip when you are going up to Washington? Is it in May?
MR. DAISEY: June, I think.
MR. LAYCOCK: You going to take him Dave?
MR. HALL: Yeah, I’m gonna come over here and get him. If any body around here has
got a video player, I want to play this tape. I want to show you this guy down in
Louisiana. He lives just exactly like guys do. He lives on Bellacraw Island. He’s one of
my buddies down there. He’ll be there too. Boy, you talk about a character; he’s never
done anything in his life but live off the water. And even down there, he’s having trouble.
This year he had to quit trapping. You talk about a ‘coon trapper. If they hadn’t shut
her down, he’d a caught three thousand coons this year. And he can’t sell em.
MR. DAISEY: Naw, he couldn’t even give ‘em away.
MR. HALL: I’ll tell you what he’d do. He’s just like Cigar. Cigar was not telling truth,
he’d catch the same way. But if Dennis sets fifty traps, he’ll have forty-five coons next
morning.
MR. DAISEY: What’d we have one morning? We set twelve traps and we had nine
coons and three foxes.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, around that circle down there.
MR. HALL: But those marsh coons down there are so big!
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, there are.
MR. HALL: [Good grief!] You just can’t believe how many of them there are!
MR. DAISEY: There’s so many crayfish, and so many crayfish and things.
MR. LAYCOCK: They got good feed down there don’t they?
MR. HALL: He is oystering right now. He is hand-tonging oysters.
MR. DAISEY: Well what about the muskrats? He couldn’t sell the muskrats either
could he?
MR. HALL: S---, there ain’t no more muskrats! The salt water done killed them all!
There ain’t one muskrat in that marsh now. That marsh where he trapped had the highest
production of muskrats of any marsh in the world. There ain’t one living there now, not
one!
MR. LAYCOCK: What’s the Nutria doing in there?
MR. HALL: The Nutria is still hanging in there. He’s eating up everything but house
and home.
MR. MCKENNEY: They eat the boats and all up don’t they? Hell, they eat oars!
MR. HALL: There’s still a few Alligators. He’s still alligator hunting. Alligator hunting
saves him, at that particular time of the year. He does it all. He traps, he crabs, he fishes,
he fishes gill nets, he tongs oysters. It used to be old Dennis, like he said, he said,
“Every morning my whole life, I always set an alarm clock, but it never went off. I’d
wake up before the alarm clock because I was so happy to get back out there.” This guy
loves that marsh. His Daddy was a market hunter. He bootlegged ducks for New Orleans
finest restaurants for years. He raised his family that way, old man Herb; he’s still alive!
And it’s amazing how they live the same way that you did up there. And it’s amazing
how similar the attitudes are. He talks in another funny accent that people like to hear.
But I got him now. He goes all over the country with me. Last year, we had the Marriott
Hotels furnishing all the rooms, and TWA furnishing all of the plane tickets. We’ve been
all over the damn country! The last time we was up in Minnesota, he’s talked to twenty
thousand people in the Humphrey Dome. And like I say, he sees his lifestyle going. He
said, he’s going to fight to save it till the last breath.
MR. DAISEY: Well I wish him a lot of luck! [very sincere]
MR. LAYCOCK: I do too!
MR. HALL: But he’s great. He’d have never believed he’d be involved in something like
this. I took him to Minnesota, and Bud Grant, that famous football coach up there gave a
luncheon for him. He won’t wear, and that’s the way I told him; “That’s the way it
ought to be Dennis”. But he said “ I never put a damn suit on, for nothing like that for
nothing. I ain’t putting on no suit or any good clothes now!” So when he goes with me,
down there they wear white boots, because it’s hot in the summer time. That’s what all
the fishermen wear down there. You can see a guy walking around with white boots on,
that’s a fisherman.
MR. MCKENNEY: They do the same thing around here; these boys wear ‘em most
times. They are cooler, the white boots.
MR. HALL: Down there we call them “white booters”. When you see a white booter,
you’ve got you a commercial fisherman. That’s all they wear. But he went up there and
they put on this luncheon in the fanciest place in Minneapolis. I mean, the fanciest place.
And there were nothing but millionaires there. They were going to donate money to help
us get a helicopter and everything. That damned Dennis was in there! When you walked
in, everybody was wondering, ‘what is that fellow, is he the janitor or something?’ Old
Bud Grant said, “Hell no, he’s the guy I’m honoring at this luncheon!” And old Dennis, I
love him, he said, “Man, they took me up there to Minnesota. That football coach is a
hell of a fella! I like him!” But they gave him a big luncheon up there. It was really
something. I got him on the airplane and I told him, “Now goddamnit Dennis, don’t”, he
was worried about being on an airplane, and I had another outlaw with me too, a guy
named Ace Cullin. He’s about six foot, six. You’ll see him on the video too. Man what
that guy did to ducks in his life ain’t been thought of! He kept records. He averaged
sixty mallards a day! That was his average! A bad hunt was forty mallards and they
used nag planes to bait them with. He had them big sportsmen he’d take out. He said
that when they’ll get down to forty mallards, he’d get out on the rail and call up the
headquarters and tell them to crank up the plane. He said that the good hunts were one
hundred mallards a day. That’s what they were killing, one hundred mallards a day.
That’s all they’d shoot, mallards. But he goes with me on these trips too. But between
he and Dennis, they decided they were going to have a north/south duck calling
championship; Minnesota versus Louisiana. And it was going to be rigged you know,
and I… Dennis won the state duck calling championship in Louisiana three or four times.
They made him retire. Ace won it twice. Them Yankees don’t know nuthin about calling
no ducks. S---! They didn’t even have a duck call with them so they gave him an old
ratty ass duck call to use at this big contest, and it was going to judged by crowd
applause. S---, they had to give it to them southerners! They just couldn’t…it was so
damn one-sided! They gave old Ace first, and Dennis second! But I think it’s
helping…getting these guys that… It’s obvious to me that people who used to kill the
most ducks were the ones who violated the law most and cared most about safety.
MR. LAYCOCK: It seems that way. It paradoxical I know, but damn if it don’t seem
that way.
MR. HALL: That’s the way it is. That’s my whole program. The guys that are helping
me do what I can to save the ducks are the guys that we used to chase around!
MR. LAYCOCK: They’ve seen when there was a lot of them, and now they see what
it’s come to. Anybody ought to be concerned with it really, that cares anything at all
about ducks.
MR. HALL: Well, you know, all these people come down here and that’s fine. They
buy these decoys, and they buy shorebirds; and they’ve never been in the marsh, and
that’s great. But they have no comprehension of how valuable wetlands are to our
survival in this country. They love to eat seafood….
MR. DAISEY: It’s just like this man afishing! Them wetlands have all in the world to do
with this man commercial fishing, making his living. Them wetlands is where she all
begins!
MR. HALL: I’ve said this before. As far as I’m concerned, when the trapper goes and
the commercial fisherman goes, the things I am interested in life are going.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right! What the hell else, will there be?!
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s just a matter of time. And it’s been my bread and butter all my
life, my grandpa’s on back. And the way things is agoin now, its all over. We went down
there to that meeting a week before last to that meeting down in Norfolk. In all my life
I’ve always, you know, had respect for people and everything; but you go to them
meetings like that, and they’ll vote you right down! Twenty little draggers! I said, “now
boys, I gotta give it for this…” What it amounts to is a gill-netter against a little dragger,
or a oysterman against a clammer. I said, “now, if you’re gonna kill this little dragger, this
little fifty foot dragger, I got a forty-foot gill net boat. I want you to kill her too.” But
just don’t kill me and let everybody else go!
MR. HALL: We’ve got the same thing going on in Louisiana.
MR. MCKENNEY: Let me tell you what they done now! They went right there, it was
all day long, but when the time come they voted it right down and killed us stone dead.
But they didn’t kill the gill net boat. Why? And the sports fishermen! They said that
the species of Flounders is down. How can you save the Flounder? Just like he was
talking about the Black Duck! Don’t let nobody catch him, wouldn’t that be fair? But
they couldn’t done it that way.
MR. HALL: Too much money involved.
MR. MCKENNEY: Me and Captain Bob, I said, “ If you’re gonna kill me, I want you
to kill Captain Bob!”
MR. LAYCOCK: See? There’s so much money involved with them sports fishermen!
MR. HALL: You know what it all boils down to? You’ve got a polluted problem. You
got all kind of different things that are directly affecting the resource, from that
standpoint. Then you’ve got more folks, better equipment, getting out to the resource.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, better equipment.
MR. HALL: With the Redfish down there…see, we’ve got redfish. We did have redfish.
I was the one that blew the whistle on that. I had to fight like hell. Man, they got to
using spotter planes and sonar. They started catching…and the redfish down there, I
think there is probably a connection to these redfish up here, but in the Gulf of Mexico,
that’s were they spawn. And the spawn in open water, in big masses. They actually lay
their eggs in open water and those larvae wash in shore. And they hatch and spend six
years in the marsh before they go back to the ocean to breed. These big, massive schools
of redfish, called red drum here, I mean, it looks impressive when you pull over them with
a plane. The goddamned Chef down in New Orleans…it shows you how things happen
so quick. He comes up with this blackened redfish. Paul Prudomme.
And he wasn’t doing it to hurt anybody, he was just trying to make a living. All of a
sudden everybody in the United States wants to eat blackened red fish. So the
[unintelligible], they get over there and they start catching these damn redfish. It was
literally a gold rush. They’d catch them at one hundred thousand pounds a set. I am
watching this go on. And when they over set, or when they need a few more to make a
load, and they can’t handle them, they dump them overboard. In three weeks, they’d
made dumps out there where you were looking for ocean, but it was solid, covered with
dead redfish. And a lot of those fish were twenty and thirty years old. That’s how old
some of them fish were!
MR. MCKENNEY: You smother them when you catch them like that.
MR. HALL: Yeah, well they can’t release em. They die real quick. Anyway, I went out
there with a plane in the Gulf, and video camera. I video tapped the whole thing. There
were seven boats doing this. The inshore fishery was depending on that damn Gulf stock
to keep these larvae coming in here. It was going to kill the inshore fisheries. So there
was a hell of a battle, but as soon as I showed the video… the biologists were saying that
there was nothing wrong with the redfish, inshore or offshore. And you’ve got more gill
nets coming in all of the time. All of the fishermen in Florida have moved to Louisiana!
All the fishermen from Texas moved to Louisiana! The numbers of fisherman just
skyrocketed. They finally did a study and the found out that from the inshore fishing
they were getting no escapement; none getting back to the Gulf. And they were taking
the resource out there to the extent that if we hadn’t got it shut down on that, there
wouldn’t be nothing left. But then when they made the mistake…’cause I’m a member of
the Commercial Fisherman’s Association down there. I could go to the meetings and they
would listen to me. I tried to tell them, because the sports got into it, they wanted to
outlaw the commercial take and sake of redfish. I told the commercial fishermen they were
going to have to yield some on this. They couldn’t hold the line all of the way because it
they did, and they forced the issue, they would be put out of business! They didn’t want
to listen. They passed a law last year, no more commercial take of redfish.
MR. LAYCOCK: Protecting the species.
MR. DAISEY: Well that’s just what they was talking about with the “rock”.
MR. HALL: And that’s wrong because we got a lot of fine restaurants in Louisiana,
that’s what we’re famous for. That doesn’t mean a Omaha, Nebraska restaurant’s not
good. There’s not enough redfish. It’s not a real prolific species to start with. Serve
redfish in every restaurant! But we should have protected our local commercial fishermen
to allow them to sell to these restaurants, which was good for the state and all. It’s
always one side wins the whole goddamned thing, and puts the others down! Now
you’ve got wars going on down there! You’ve got commercial fishermen fighting
commercial fishermen. You’ve got sport fishermen, and down there where Dennis lives,
you’ll meet old Dennis, there’s guys making their livings off of launches, where they put
these boats overboard. S---, man, there’s traffic jams down there! There’s so much
fishing going on. They started blocking the roads! They had to bring the State Police in
there and break it up. They wouldn’t allow the sports to come down the highway! They
had them backed up for miles! There were guns drawn and all!
MR. MCKENNEY: If you’re going to take a man out of his life, man, that’s his bread
and butter!
MR. HALL: That’s right!
MR. MCKENNEY: But every law is passed for the goddamned sports fisherman! Let
me tell you what they done with the Rockfish here, now.
MR. HALL: But still, the commercial fishermen; you take those boats out there, I went
and talked to all of them captains. They admitted to me, every captain except one,
admitted to me that what they were doing was not going to last long and that they were
gonna rape the redfish. But they said, “Doc, we gotta a note on this -------- boat that if I
can make a few more days out here, I can pay for this boat and then I’m out of it.” But
still, he knew that. He knew he was going to destroy that resource, but he couldn’t stop
himself. That’s what’s wrong. There’s so much greed going on, and so many people
fighting each other.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, but see, he didn’t want to face facts. But how about a man
who passes a law like this now? This is my bread and butter, all I’ve ever done. I’m
gonna face the facts. I’m gonna agree with you one hundred percent. But how about a
law like this? You can’t catch no rockfish. But you can catch Shad now, OK. How can
you go setting them shad nets, and not catch no Rock?
MR. DAISEY: Can’t do it.
MR. MCKENNEY: Or, we went out there last year, he knows it [referring to Mr.
Daisey] we went out there last year and we set them nets three different mornings and
there was like a hundred and thirty or forty boxes of rocks, that long by that long. Now
what did we have to do with them? We had to throw them back overboard, and dead, and
the crab and the seagulls eat ‘em. See? That’s a bad law, ain’t it? What do you think
about that? Why don’t they stop them from hackering up nets? Then the man that’s got
fish, he can go out there and drift today, but see, if he can go out there and set his nets,
everybody can go and set them.
MR. DAISEY: And they’ll be dead the next morning. If you make him stay out there
with his nets, he could release them see?
MR. HALL: You would kill half that many. You’ll kill some, but you won’t kill half as
many.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you drift that net, it’s the law, you can turn him aloose. But
when he’s dead, and you’ve got to throw him back…
MR. LAYCOCK: It’s leaving the nets out all night.
MR. MCKENNEY: That’s right, that’s what does it, see.
MR. HALL: You might kill one once in a while drifting like that, but you won’t kill one
out of a hundred as you will the other way.
MR. MCKENNEY: You won’t kill one out of a hundred! With that law like it was, I
had to throw a hundred and thirty boxes over board, you know what I’d do? I took a
hammer, and with every one that wasn’t dead, I took that hammer and stuck it right there
between his eyes. And then I’d throw him over board.
MR. DAISY: Well, I know it makes you mad, but you really can’t…
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, but don’t let us set ‘em then.
MR. HALL: If you think that this is a problem right now, I hate to say this; but if you
could look forward twenty years…
MR. MCKENNEY: It can’t get no worse.
MR. HALL: Oh yeah it can.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you don’t give me but six hours to go sea clamming!
MR. HALL: I’m just saying though, that the more people, and the more involvement,
it’s going to get worse! That’s what I’m saying.
MR. MCKENNEY: It don’t make no difference. Cut it all out, cut it all out and raise
‘em in farms. That’s what’s gonna happen anyway.
MR. HALL: I wouldn’t doubt that.
MR. LAYCOCK: Yeah, I think that’s the future of it.
MR. MCKENNEY: What is Mike McGee and Bobby gonna pay me fourteen cents for,
when he can raise all he wants?
MR. LAYCOCK: That’s right, that’s what’s gonna happen.
MR. HALL: But still, when you go to farming for anything, I agree, that’s the answer.
But when you do away with the marsh people and the commercial fishermen in this
country; now maybe the people that live in the big cities new associated with that.
Because that’s the way I made my way in school. I owe my college degree to commercial
fishing. I always appreciated it.
MR. MCKENNEY: I’ve always known that he [referring to Mr. Daisey] was born and
raised in the marsh. And I known you was born and raised in the marsh. But any
goddurned thing it’s gonna help him, or me it won’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s for the
other big man!
MR. HALL: Yeah, unfortunately, I see it too. I don’t know.
MR. LAYCOCK: It’s sad though to think that we might come to place where we raise all
these things on farms. It’s not the same.
MR. DAISEY: No, it’s not the same. Not when we had a resource that would take and
renew itself.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you could get somebody to come around, and check this fellow on
the water, that’s his bread and butter, his life. Then you are talking to him. If you set,
I’m going to say at $3000.00 for him to get is gill net license, cause it cost me that much.
But don’t let you come right down here, say in five hundred yards of my net, and go
fishing. When you do that, you’re killing; really what it amounts to, is one man is gonna
kill the other one. It’s gonna be a sad thing. The government, the United States
government gives me one six hours to go catch my sea clams!
MR. HALL: Is that what it is now?
MR. MCKENNEY: Five years ago, if you would told somebody that, they would say,
”Horse-----!” You know you’ve got to have more than six hours! Six hours to go and try
to make a living! No make up day.
MR. HALL: You can’t do it that way.
MR. MCKENNEY: I bet you I can call twenty-five men trying theirselves. Trying to
pay for his boat and his home on a six-hour … And a man that passes a law like that, he
don’t know nothing about nothing! [Mr. McKenney is irate]
MR. HALL: You have to go that particular time?
MR. DAISEY: He’s got to go at that particular time, and that particular day, no matter
how bad the water is. That’s what he means by time.
MR. HALL: They should set it up on a weekly basis or something. Go any time during
that week, whenever the weather’s right, you know? Or, don’t work over a certain
amount of hours.
MR. MCKENNEY: If you are running a grocery store, and I come to you and you say
Wednesday is your day, and you open only then, where’s the difference?
MR. HALL: That’s right. But I can’t tell you what, it’s going to get worse.
MR. MCKENNEY: It’s really getting to be a sad, damn situation. And people are
getting….bad things is happening!
MR. HALL: But don’t you think on the other hand, if they hadn’t put some kind of
controls on it, the big man, the big boats would gobble every damn bit of it up, and the
little man get nothing?
MR. MCKENNEY: Every law that they’ve passed has been for the big man though!
They’re trying to cut the little one out!
MR. HALL: I think if they didn’t restrict that big man though, he’d grind you right
under.
MR. MCKENNEY: But wait a minute! They ain’t hurt him though! I can show you
how.
MR. HALL: Unless he owns a whole heap of boats or something.
MR. MCKENNEY: He’s bought every license there are. Now he’d got it like he wants
it.
MR. HALL: I see what you mean by that.
MR. MCKENNEY: Because the government, they issue so many licenses. The big
man’s made it so hard on the little man, until he’s had to sell his license and ….
MR. HALL: Well, they ought not to be allowed to do that.
MR. MCKENNEY: They wouldn’t let nobody else get it. If you wanted to go aboard
your boat, you can’t go get in to save your life, because there were some many licenses
issued. Now, you can go buy a man’s boat and his license, but you can’t go build your
boat and get yourself a license.
MR. HALL: I don’t think they ought to allow that.
MR. DAISEY: See, that’s not constitutional.
MR. MCKENNEY: That’s not constitutional! That’s right!
MR. HALL: In the business, they call that a closed fishery, or, I think… ? They’ve got
that in Alaska. The same thing.
MR. MCKENNEY: Yeah, they got it in Alaska, ‘cause Alaska’s got everything like they
want it, and they’re coming right here!
MR. LAYCOCK: They pass it down from generation to generation, the licenses and
things.
MR. MCKENNEY: You can go get in a boat right off shore, you’re not very far either;
they look just like a goddurned city! A great, they’re ships. We’re just a little pisspot to
them. They got ships! They sell him a license if he’ll come here. You don’t never see
him throw one damn thing back! They’re killing it off out there. [tape 1 of 2 ends]
MR. DAISEY: ….there’s men coming in right today filling in wetlands, right today,
while you’re here.
MR. HALL: You see a big difference on this island from back when we were here.
They’ve worked out, and I want yall to talk about this back and forth; that if they do
save it, it’s going to be the guys that duck hunted. The duck hunters that’ll stand up for
the waterfowl, including obeying the law. This is the only way. Because the developers
damn sure aren’t going to see.
MR. DAISEY: It’s just like them fish, them little fish over there at Virginia marsh and all
up and down through them bays. They come up there and spawn, those little tinny
spots and little tinny fish like that, all up through there. In all of them fresh water places.
When the fall come, the fish’ll go on out, and there will be more fish. But if they had their
way, they’d go ahead a fill her right on in.
MR: HALL: I think generally speaking, the duck hunter, even with all of his faults, and
like you say, we used to violate the laws, shoot over the limit and all of that, but I really
think the duck hunter has more or less paid his dues and put his money where his mouth
is. They help support that land program, through, you know, paying the fees and taxes
on buying ammunition, and their duck stamps and so forth and so on. I was glad to see
them put a program in on this refuge where you’ve got to have the duck stamp, or
something, to get in to them. I think people should help pay for them. Duck hunters
pretty well purchased them from what I understand. What makes these refuges work
with duck stamp monies, it’s a mighty big portion of them. Tell me in your own words if
you believe this: that if they save duck hunting, it’s gonna be the duck hunter, primarily
behind the program?
MR. MCKENNEY: I think the duck hunters themselves will have a big input into it, if
anybody will listen to them, which is [questionable].
MR. DAISEY: They want to throw it in my face about what I done all my life. What I
done then, ain’t got a damn thing to do with what I’m gonna do from now on! I’m gonna
do what I want to from now on, and it’s right, and that’s all there is to it. That’s what
they’ll throw in your face, see, about that. If you say anything about filling in the isle,
hurting the hunting and fishing…
MR. HALL: In other words, you are still being condemned because you were a marketer?
MR. DAISEY: Oh yeah, that’s right!
[blank area on tape]
MR. HALL: …is that so?
MR. DAISEY: Shoot the cold air hurts me now.
MR. HALL: I just went and got that senior citizen’s ticket.
MR. DAISEY: Yeah, how ‘bout that!
MR. HALL: I’ve had mine for quite a while now. Cigar, tell me that story that you just
told about what happened with Tom Reed up there. Tell the whole thing about what
they were doing up there in your own words.
MR. DAISEY: Tom Reed?
MR. HALL: No, about what they were doing up there, nightlighting those bluegills down
there.
MR. DAISEY: Oh, Tom and Carl Reed was lighting bluegills in Hog Island Bay. They
was way off Sandy Island somewhere out in the Bay. That had is loaded down with
bluegills and the wind was up to the west. You had to get under that westerly bank to get
out of the seas and high wind. In them days, they used little oars and had some
[unintelligible]. They were thirteen foot long, and some of them had a little [unintelligible]
and some of them were flat bottomed.
MR. HALL: They were low sided?
MR. DAISEY: They were low sided, and water would wash right over and sink ‘em
when it got rough enough. What they done, they went to the mainland. They went
towards the mainland. They seen this light. They didn’t know who in the hell lived
there, but anyway, they go ashore. And a old German guy come to the door. They beat
on the door and said “we’re in a mess, we can’t get back aboard the boat.” He told them
to come on in and that he would give them something to eat. They sat them down to jug
of “loasses”. That’s what they called it years ago. It was molasses in this jug. He gave
them a piece of bread apiece and when they went to pull out the molasses, they had some
hair come out of there. I think one of them stuck his finger in there, and looked and seen
this mouse. There was a mouse in this molasses jug. So anyway, they sopped the
molasses. That was one of the things you done, down in the Bay. You never enough to
eat in them days. You always eat what little bit you had, then you’d pour a little
molasses in your plate, and whatever piece of bread you had left, you sopped that, and
that made up your meal. Uncle Tom [Varner?], and them, they used to use sugar.
They’d fry fat meat and put a little sugar in, and sop that. Same thing, you know?
MR. HALL: No much for grub was it?
MR. DAISEY: Now listen, that’s what them old people’d eat in them days. I ain’t
kidding you. That’s the way they lived. All of them would go down to the Bay in these
old boats. I went with a man like that. He wouldn’t give you no grub that would amount
to nothing. He just get two or three things that you needed, and he’d steam clams or and
damn thing you’d find. I lived off of K rations in the 1940’s. They’d wash up on the
beach. The whole beach was lined up with K rations. He’d go along and open up them
cans and get them two little chocolate bars out, you know. There was some hardtacks in
there and he’d fill his pockets with them. That’s what we eat.
MR. HALL: He thought he’d found Christmas!
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it son! They had little chocolate bars in them.
Sometimes a can of potted meat, and powdered eggs. We found a whole big thing of
powdered eggs. We mixed them with two or three good eggs, you know. Son, we had the
biggest feast you ever seen! But you lived tough, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday. A boxed of gun shells is what you carried, and you didn’t waste
them either. You didn’t shoot no ducks flying. You made grocery shots. Every time you
shot, you wanted to get something.
MR. HALL: Or, you kill a lot full of birds.
MR. DAISEY: If the tides was right.
MR. HALL: Or, if you catch them on that drift. Boy, then you could take ‘em.
MR. DAISEY: Catch ‘em on that drift, and shore birds was on that drift you could cut a
lane right down through them.
MR. HALL: They were good to eat too.
MR. DAISEY: They were. You plucked the breast right out of them, and they were
better than nothing. I trapped muskrats on the south end of Cedar Island beach. And
we’d eat the muskrats, and sell the hides, you know. We lived off of the land. We had
[sounds like] terrapin. I catch seventy some terrapin in one day off of one mud bog.
They were big old terrapins. We used to sell them to [sounds like] Miles Hancock.
MR. HALL: So, do you want to tell me about your going over to Washington to this
Ducks Unlimited meeting?
MR. DAISEY: I’m scared to death.
MR. HALL: I want you tell about how you see that Ducks Unlimited fits into saving the
ducks.
MR. DAISEY: Well, if you hadn’t of had Ducks Unlimited, god knows how bad it would
be. I believe that. I believe that’s a fair way to put it. Without Ducks Unlimited I don’t
think we’d probably have anything. I don’t think Ducks Unlimited is one hundred
percent pure, some of the members any way. I’ll put it that way. Some of the people
that belong to Ducks Unlimited. That’s what I’ve got to say about it. I don’t know
much more to add to that. I just think that the organization over all, is helping ducks. It’s
a matter of public record. I guess anybody can check on it, I mean, what they do with the
money. I knows a lot of the big members, a lot of the people that have been in charge of
it, was important people, you know. I know what they done. You know who was head
of it at one time don’t you? I don’t want to mention the man’s name but you know who
was head of it at one time.
MR. HALL: From the Polk’s Island club.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right. He shot as many… he brought over [unintelligible] I’m
sure.
MR. HALL: He’s done that a few times.
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe he has. But he give me hell if I trapped them. See?
This is what I…
MR. HALL: They were worried to death if they seen me sail by up there. Because
[unintelligible].
MR. DAISEY: That’s right! You better believe they were scared to death of this man!
You better believe it. And the man that was scared of us was the best friend both of us
ever had, to tell you the truth! He’s the nicest man on earth. But he know’d we hunted,
we lighted, we’d do anything, you know, see!
MR. HALL: I heard about [unintelligible].
MR. DAISEY: We’re not really gonna bother them people because we know that was
the man’s living, and we didn’t go down there.
MR. HALL: [Unintelligible}
MR. DAISEY: We never bothered them.
MR. HALL: It’s a different day.
MR. DAISEY: They way I see it was in my lifetime, when I trapped ducks, and did bad
things, I guess it was bad, I’m sure it was. On the other hand, these people that was
in…like these big clubs, they would shoot thirty, forty, or fifty bluegills, that was all
right. But if I catched a hundred or two black ducks, then, they would call me a son of a
bitch, you know! They didn’t like it at all. These people were members of organizations
like Ducks Unlimited, they were prominent people; real prominent, nice prominent
people! They wasn’t, they’d just get carried away with the shooting I guess.
MR. HALL: They didn’t rob a bank.
MR. DAISEY: They wouldn’t have robbed a bank or nothing like that, I’d say that they
never [broke another] law besides that. But this time is a whole lot different. We got to
do it real different now, or damn if we ain’t in real trouble! We’re in real trouble now.
We’re in last days of hunting if everybody don’t get together and do all they can do to
preserve the wetlands and be conservative with the birds; or the take of the birds. I mean,
this man can’t never be satisfied again to go hunting, because we’ve been used to shooting
all we wanted and doing what we wanted to do. So it’s a little bit different now. The
only time we go up now, when we go off for two things; [unintelligible] and a oyster
basket. We try to get us some ducks if we can get ‘em. That’s a pile to eat. Just like the
Indian would do. He’d get a pile to eat, and that all they want. If we get us a basket off
oysters, or a hundred clams, we come home with something we can feed you with. And I
enjoy that more than I do carrying the whole damn load of ducks, you know what I mean?
It’s more fun to me. And we carried a little cold beer with us didn’t we?
MR. HALL: Yeah, we liked a little cold beer. So, you said, that the guys who used to
kill the ducks so bad, are now the ones who are the conservationists on this island, trying
to save the wetlands and everything?
MR. DAISEY: I believe that most of the people who have been down that road know
more about it that the people that ain’t never done it. In other words, if you’ve done
something in your lifetime, you know what you’ve done. And you know how many you
destroyed. And nobody’s going to…you don’t have to let somebody else judge you, you
can judge yourself. If you are a fair minded person, you can judge for yourself whether
it’s right or wrong. That’s the reason why I think that most of the people who has
hunted, and done too much of it, are today the conservationists, today. That’s my
personal opinion of it.
MR. HALL: And you believe that they’ll be the ones that save it?
MR. DAISEY: If ducks can be saved, I believe they’ll have a big part to play in it. But
there again, Ducks Unlimited has got all these members. I mean, they’re gonna have to
train them people to do the right thing, you know? They’re gonna have to do the right
thing. Really and truly, the kill itself should be the big deal about it. Get out there and
get hunting! Get out in the open air, and look at stuff! I got so many more, I’d just rather
look at it. I love to look at it, than to kill it. That’s my point! That’s they way I feel
now about it. I think they can enjoy that too in the same way, you know! The killing is
not the big deal. We like to…I like to go up to the hunting lodge to the [sounds like]
Redeye Club. I take my gun up there, and I don’t never take it out of the boat! I never
take it out of the case! I drink me some beer, and eat me some food, and tell these yarns
you know. We get talking about things we’ve done, and enjoy ourselves.
MR. HALL: What if somebody told you that you couldn’t go back in the marsh any
more? You’d have to blind your eyes to what you see behind your house?
MR. DAISEY: Well, it would be all over for me, you know. Even though that I don’t
care to kill a whole lot of stuff today, I’m not opposed to no one else going hunting. I’ll
never be opposed to hunting. I think it’s a thing that should be done. Trapping,
fishing…it’s a resource that’s renewable if it’s done right. If you do it right, it’s a
renewable resource that you can enjoy for the rest of your days, generation after
generation. That’s the way I see it.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s the sad part of it. Is that people…my nephew down in North
Carolina, his wife just had a little baby, a little boy, and he named it after me! I didn’t
think nobody’d ever name nothing after me! I’d like to see that little boy live long enough
to where he could get out and go hunting and kill a pair of ducks once in a while; or go out
and pick up a mess of oysters, and things. But if things keep going like they’re going
around here, especially around Chincoteague, he’ll have to go somewhere’s else besides
Chincoteague to find anything.
MR. DAISEY: That, he will. That he will.
MR. HALL: If it wasn’t for this refuge here, I don’t think we’d have any ducks at all.
MR. DAISEY: No, we wouldn’t have none at all.
MR. HALL: There’s no way in the world.
MR. DAISEY: This and me has hunted all my life. We’ve been through all kinds of
scrapes in our hunting life. We hunted and trapped together, and fished. What do you
say, [addressing new person, unclear].
UNIDENTIFIED: Like I was just saying, I was fortunate enough that my nephew has
just had a little baby boy, and he named it after me. I didn’t think anybody would ever
name anything after me. I’d like to see that little fellow be able to come up and go hunting
if he wanted to, and kill him some ducks, or go up and get him a mess of oysters to eat, or
clams, like we’ve done all our life. I swear I think he’d going to have to go somewheres
else but Chincoteague to do it, the way the development is going on here. As crazy as
everything is getting. As far as I’m concerned, if it wasn’t for this refuge here, I doubt if
you’d ever have any ducks. They couldn’t stay here in the marshes. It’s just about
impossible. The hunting pressure is so strong here. When we first got this refuge, I was
like everybody else, I thought it was the worst thing in the world that had happened.
Cause you couldn’t go around hunting like you was used to doing. I found out different
now that I’ve gotten older, and with the way everything is going. It’s a good thing we
have these refuges. It’s the only chance you’ve got. If the duck has a place to go rest,
and if you don’t get away from any hunting pressure. Tell me about…use the words
Ducks Unlimited and the importance of saving the habitat, and how that’s their mission.
UNIDENTIFIED: I don’t think you can put enough emphasis on the importance of
saving the habitat. I think that probably in the past, Ducks Unlimited has done a fairly
descent job at it. I don’t know how they’re going to progress in the future because it
costs so much money to…anything around the water has gotten to be so expensive. I
would say that they are still trying to do a pretty decent job. I belong to Ducks
Unlimited, and support it. But a lot of us have learned that we’re going to have to … a
lot of the duck hunters, they get carried away a lot of the times. Of course it’s probably
easy to understand. You go hunting in pretty weather, and you can’t kill your limit.
Then when you get a chance to do it, the jobs stops. I’ve been through all of that. We’re
going to have to all do it. We’re all going to have to all try and protect the resource,
what’s left of it, as well as the habitat.
MR. HALL: What about working together? If we’re going to save ducks, and duck
hunting we’re all going to have work together.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s for sure. Another facet of it is that the hunter is going to have
be a little more frugal than what he’s been. He’s going to have to obey the laws, as
restrictive as they seem to be. I think we’re all going to have to take an interest and try
to keep the habitat we’ve got left; and destroyed in the name of progress. I can’t see
where it’s any progress when you destroy your natural resources. Ain’t no progress to
it, as far as I’m concerned. And like that little boy, my namesake; I hope that by the
time he gets eighteen or twenty years old he’ll be able to go out and shoot him a pair of
ducks once in a while.
MR. HALL: What would you do if they told you you couldn’t go back in marsh any
more? How would you feel?
UNIDENTIFIED: Well, I guess I could take it, maybe at my age. But I still, I wouldn’t
like it at all.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
UNIDENTIFIED: It’s part of my life and it’s always been. I still like to do it. I don’t
do as much of it as I did, but I still enjoy getting out in the marsh, and getting out in the
fresh air. I hope we can conserve it some kind of way. It’s going to be a tough fight.
And everybody’s going to have to work together to do it.
MR. HALL: At one time you ran from the Game Warden, and ran from me. We had
some times…looking back on that, would you ever have thought that in your lifetime
you’d be sitting with me, like you are now, and saying what you’re saying?
UNIDENTIFIED: [Mr. McKenney?] Well, it’s probably true. I’ve been [unintelligible]
a few times, but I like to think that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned a little something. If
you can’t learn anything as you go through this life, you’re in bad shape.
MR. DAISEY: You’re darned right!
UNIDENTIFIED: I think I’ve learned a little better. If I had it to do over again, there’s a
lot of things I did, as far as shooting a lot of ducks, and taking a lot of game and stuff, I
don’t think I would do it.
MR. HALL: And you never got caught? You weren’t ever really….?
UNIDENTIFIED: No, I’ve never even paid a fine. I can’t really complain about the law.
It don’t bother me all that much, really. ‘Cause I done a lot of stuff in the past. I’ve just
been fortunate I guess, in a lot of ways. The one thing that force, they are spread so thin,
there’s so few of them, and they have so much territory to cover, I don’t know how they
do as good a job as they do. I seen a time that me and the Game Wardens wasn’t too
good a friends. But I’ve got a lot more respect them than I used to have. Because they’re
doing a hell of a difficult job. It’s a pretty near impossible job, counting the numbers of
them.
MR. HALL: What about the issue that there will never be enough Game Wardens to
police the hunters, and that the hunters are going to have to obey the law because they
want to?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, I think that’s a very valid point. I think it’s like a lot of other
things. People have got to be educated. We’ve got to start with the younger generations
that’s coming up now. Programs in schools, and everything. I believe there is more
emphasis, in fact, I know there is more emphasis on conservation than there was when I
was coming up. You didn’t hardly know what the word was in those days, when we
were young and first coming up. It was just natural to go out, and if you wanted to kill a
pair of ducks, go ahead a kill them whether the season was in or out. Conservation was
just a foreign word as far as we were concerned, when we were coming up. But I see
more of it all the time, where people are more interested in it. I think it’s a good trend.
MR. HALL: Do you think that the responsibility of saving duck hunting is more on the
hunter’s shoulder than anyone else?
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, I would say. Even the past, as far as purchasing these refuges,
and things like that, the duck hunter has paid his dues. I mean he’s…. [tape goes blank]
MR. DAISEY: You’ll catch ‘em right out here. They go right out here. You’ve love em
don’t you? [addressing an unidentified woman]
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: No, I don’t know. [all laugh] I never tried one actually.
MR. DAISEY: You sure you don’t want to try this one?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Okay.
MR. DAISEY: You know you could try this one. Try it one time. I believe you can eat
him. Just put him in your mouth and chew. He’s good! He’s the best thing you ever eat.
He tastes good don’t he?
[Woman makes noises as if to say it tastes very bad, all laugh. Take goes blank, restarts]
MR. DAISEY: So you just that one I made forty or fifty years ago. You just double it in
like that and push this one in, and screw it on top. It goes on there like that, and then
you’ve got a tin shot. Goddamned if you can’t whoop and hollar with that. [tape skips]
See! This is just a double cap, that’s all it is. It’s a Browning deal. I had it made forty or
fifty years ago. You just double it in there like that and pushing this one in and screw it
on top. It goes on top like that and you’ve got a ten shot. Goddamn if you can’t whoop
and hollar with that!
UNIDENTIFIED: And you just shoot a mess with that?
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it! Just as long as you pull the trigger, she’ll shoot
like you wouldn’t believe. To tell you the truth, I hope that these drug dealers don’t get
on to this. They talk about them M-60 whatchumakallits, now, what do you think I
could do with that? Sitting down, with ten buck shots, with twelve in the shot. Magnum
buck shot. Jesus Christ, you could fight off an army! That’s a real deadly weapon than
them damn Japanese semi-automatic rifles. …for fifty yards, I’d say. They ain’t using
them for distance. Hell, they’re in close range. There ain’t no telling. And she’s muzzle-heavy
see? That makes her muzzle-heavy. That was one of the things that when they
came out with the 1100, I don’t think they recognized it. She was a little bit muzzle-heavy
anyway, and when you put that piece on, she really is. All you got to do is keep
shooting the horizon, see?
[tape skips, Mr. Hall making adjustment to video camera and tape recorder]
MR. HALL: Stedwell, you say you’ve had your problems with federal game wardens?
[addressing younger male]
MR. DAISEY: You’ve had your problems with the federal game wardens too, I’m aware
of that.
STEDWELL: Yes sir, I’ve sure had my problems with them. It’s more one of those
things, the problems that I had with the federal people was more or less self inflicted.
You know! I brought it on myself. It took me a lot longer to grow up than most people
does. You know? When I was a kid I realized early that a sack of corn was directly
related to how many ducks I could kill. Up until my 30’s, when I was a little over 30
years old, I never saw a game warden. I didn’t know what they was. Then, all of a
sudden here they came. Yeah, I was upset. I was hot. I was mad at the judges. I was
mad at the game warden. But once I grew up, I realized that I was wrong, and they were
right. It’s more or less a thing that they need to be there, they have to be there! To
protect what’s left. If people were left to their own devices, there wouldn’t be a bird to
shoot at.
MR. DAISEY: Don’t you think taking your license was one thing that hurt you?
STEDWELL: Yeah, taking my license was devastating to me. Yeah, it hurt me, it hurt me
real bad. But it also made me realize that you can’t always take, and not put something
back. Every man’s got to put something back. Once I went to court and they got through
to me, I joined Duck Unlimited. I’ve been a sponsor. I raised birds and turn them loose
‘cause I feel like that I have stolen something from the future; from future generations that
needs to be put back. I was wrong, and that’s the way it is. It’s kind of like now, when
you talk about going up to Washington to talk to these people; on the other side of the
coin, it takes two sides to every story. Those people got to understand that education is
the key to success. It always is in anything you ever go through. In any endeavor in life.
And those people need to hear from somebody such as yourself, or possibly me, that
there is two sides to the story. We aren’t all born in rich and influential families where we
had game preserves where we could hunt on when we wanted. The poor man has to go
through his [own] devices. But that poor man needs to understand at a early age through
education that wildlife is a resource that’s for everybody, not just the rich. It’s also for
the poor. And the environment as well, needs to be protected just as much as the wildlife
does. It’s important to preserve what we have, but it’s also important to look down the
road a few generations and say that we’re going to clean the environment up, and we’re
going to look after what’s left. It’s all got to be a package.
MR. DAISEY: Where to do live at?
STEDWELL: I live in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It’s right on the Potomac River.
We have a lot birds, a lot of puddle ducks, a lot of divers. Also, being on the Northern
Neck, I am bordered by two rivers. I have access to the Rappahannock and the Potomac.
MR. DAISEY: What is the condition of the river right now?
STEDWELL: I’ve lived there all my life, and I’ve watched the grass leave, I’ve watched
the ducks leave, and now I’m watching the oysters die. I’ve watched the way of life that
I grew up with totally be destroyed by pollution. And my philosophy is, I think there
can be a compromise between development, pollution and jobs, along with the
environment. But you can’t go too far in either direction. You can’t stop the
development totally, and you can’t over-develop. It’s got to be a cooperative
combination of two things; that’s between the people and the administration. The
administration has the power and the ability to control it. They need to hear all sides of
the story. I am always of the philosophy that an informed decision is the best one that
you can possibly make. I’ll tell you something, I’ve had some run ins with the game
wardens. But the bottom line is; basically what they were doing is basically right as far as
protecting the wildlife. It’s kind of one of those things, …
MR. HALL: We’re going to have to go back.
STEDWELL: I did have some problems with the games wardens, no question about it.
But my problems were more or less self inflicted. I realized that the game wardens
weren’t totally wrong. I was doing the wrong thing, no question about it. In the same
token, in reference to the game wardens, Ducks Unlimited has got to understand along
with a lot of other people, that it’s a combination of both. You know what I mean? In
other words, when that man gives you a license, you buy that duck stamp and you go on
that marsh, it’s a certain code of ethics that you ought to be able to understand yourself,
on your own. I think education is always the key to success.
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
STEDWELL: It always is. You can be a Ph. D., but you’ve got to apply it. And if you
educate a kid when he is young. I work around at home with some boys, and I let them
come on the place and hunt. But it’s always a thing where my policy is that you don’t
every shoot hen birds. It shows that you’re a better man if you pass up a hen bird, and
let that bird go, rather than to kill it just to be killing it. The whole thing of it is watching
the birds come in on the wing, and coming on the decoys. That’s a big thrill. Killing ain’t
the most important thing of it. You know that yourself. Of course, when you were
younger, and I was a lot younger, it seemed like to me killing was the most important
thing. But once you realize that that’s not the most important thing, you reach a point
where you can’t take, and never put something back. I learned that the hard way. You
can never take, and not put something back. The same goes with everybody concerned.
The people…
MR. DAISEY: And for you too, huh?
STEDWELL: No question about it. Ducks Unlimited has a good reputation, but the
quality of the organization is no better than the people that are controlling it.
MR. DAISEY: You’d better believe it!
STEDWELL: You can sit there and spend a thousand dollars, and by duck that’s going to
go for ten cents, but tomorrow morning you can get up, and the law says you’re only
supposed to kill one black duck and you kill fifteen, you done more harm that you done
the night before!
MR. DAISEY: That’s right.
STEDWELL: All of it goes hand in hand. The Fish and Wildlife Service, the
administration, EPA, as far as pollution in the marshes and in the creeks and rivers and
everything. It’s all right there together. It’s a cooperative program from educating the
little folks, right on up to people my age, and your age.
MR. DAISEY: You had a lot of problems with the wardens. Didn’t they take your
license?
STEDWELL: Yeah, and taking the license and being exposed was one of the biggest
things that had the most impact on me when I got caught. You know, everybody likes to
be Joe Cool. In other words, they [unintelligible] with a .44 magnum, you know what I
mean? You’re the “bad” dude. I broke all of those laws, I dug into cliffs, I put corn out,
and I killed geese over the limit, and shot at night by the moon. But there you are in the
spotlight, the Fish and Wildlife Service has got you, and believe me, it’s devastating for
them to take your hunting license. That is one aspect of it. And the other aspect of it is;
everybody that you know, that has some sort of respect for you, now you’re exposed as
a game violator. When you look at it, here you are with a shotgun and a sack of corn, and
you’re fighting wildlife that’s got feathers on him. Now what chance does he have? You
don’t leave him much chance! Once you grow up, and you realize that, it’s not a real
good feeling to know that you’ve done something to give somebody… it’s like going in
here with a stick and beating a kid. It’s just as bad as far as I’m concerned.
MR. HALL: Historically, we’ve done these things, but we do have room for
improvement on obeying the rules.
STEDWELL: Right. Yeah. My personal opinion is that the Fish and Wildlife Service is
there for the purpose obviously. Mother Nature put the wetlands and the resource these
for a purpose obviously. But it’s up to the people that hunt the birds to use ethics in
order to save what’s left. You can’t always take, and not put something back. If the
duck hunters don’t realize what they are doing, and they think it’s funny that they can
put out a sack of corn and kill “x” number of ducks. But the bottom line is this; if they
kill those birds that’s come in their area and shoot them, next year there’s going to be less.
Next year there’s going to be less if they shoot over the limit. The laws are there for a
purpose. They are made from day to day for a purpose. And they are almost made for
limits. The people spend a lot of money and a lot of effort figuring out exactly what you
should hunt, when you should hunt it. And it’s there for a reason. It’s educated people
that made informed decisions. And it’s not up to the average duck hunter to take the law
into his own hands, and take from the future. You’re stealing from your own self.
MR. DAISEY: It’s the same way with the wetlands.
STEDWELL: It all goes hand in hand.
MR. DAISEY: How about in the vicinity over there where you live now?
STEDWELL: Right now, more or less, it’s being developed up.
MR. DAISEY: What’s going to happen?
STEDWELL: What going to happen is the same thing. There is going to be an increase in
progression of pollution, an increase of loss of wetlands, lost habitats to birds. It don’t
take a very prudent person to realize that those wetlands, and these marsh grasses
provide the basic chain of life. And it works on up from…
MR. DAISEY: I guess it’s getting like it everywhere.
STEDWELL: It is like it everywhere! It’s a bad situation, from the duck hunter right on
up to the administration. But you can save it!
MR. DAISEY: I believe that. I really do!
STEDWELL: There’s got to be a concerted effort, and it’s got to be an effort that’s based
on informed, knowledgeable people making the right decisions. It boils down to this; the
duck hunter with his own code of ethics, when he buys that duck stamp has got to realize
that he can’t go out there and take over the limit. And the same decision’s got to be made
by a certain Board of Supervisors of a certain county, when the give the development
company permission to build a condo or a development over wetlands. They’ve got to
realize that there is room for a certain amount of them, but it can’t go overboard. ‘Cause
it’s… I think when it boils down to it, if it’s going to be saved, if it’s going to be made
back, regressing instead of progressing, it’s going to be basically the duck hunters that are
going to half to chip in and do it. I made a suggestion last year to a lot of people that I
know, that probably have some sort of respect for me because of the carving and other
things, maybe one year maybe no duck hunting, or no shooting hen birds. It’s gotta be up
to the duck hunter. He’s got to push and he’d got to shove to achieve what he needs to
do.
MR. HALL: Could you comment if you would to help [people] realize that saving
habitat is the key to saving waterfowl, but obeying the rules is important also.
[side 3 of tape ends, side 4 begins a separate interview with a older gentleman named
John].
JOHN: I live at 202 Atlantic Road, [unintelligible], Virginia.
MR. HALL: John, tell me a little bit about your career with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
JOHN: Well, I started with the Fish and Wildlife service in 1938. I was the second
permanent employee at the Bombay Hook Refuge when it was established. In 1939, I
transferred from Refuges over to Law Enforcement. I was transferred to Chincoteague.
Then, in 1943 when the Chincoteague Refuge was established I transferred back again to
Refuges. I was in charge of the Chincoteague Refuge until 1949. Then, I transferred back
into Law Enforcement and I was sent to New Jersey in October of 1949. Around April
of 1950 I was transferred to Cambridge, Maryland in charge of the Maryland district. In
1953 I was transferred to New York State. We moved there in August of 1953. I was
stationed there until I retired in 1968.
MR. HALL: You were the Agent in Charge of the State of New York when you retired?
JOHN: Yes, I was in charge of the State of New York, except for the area from Greene
County, south. I had all of New York State, north and west of Greene County.
MR. HALL: Now, when you were on Assateague Island, you just made a nature walk
this morning, how old are you John?
JOHN: Seventy-eight.
MR. HALL: You went out and made a couple hour walk, out bird watching, and looking
at the wildlife. Comparing the years that you were stationed on Chincoteague Refuge to
today, as far as waterfowl, give me some comparison.
JOHN: Well, back in the 1940’s we could figure on at least twenty or twenty-five
thousand ducks on the refuge through the winter. At the present time I don’t think we
had more than maybe fifteen hundred ducks on the refuge through this past winter. Now,
we did have an increase in snow geese. Snow geese were very few and far between back
in the early 1940’s.
MR. HALL: When did they close the season on Snow geese?
JOHN: Oh, way back in, back in the 1920’s.
MR. HALL: But they [the geese] gradually increased?
JOHN: Oh yeah. Well, in the late 1930’s there was a flock of approximately thirteen
thousand Snow geese, Greater Snow Geese along the Atlantic Coast. And they have
increased up to the present time when there are approximately three hundred and fifty
thousand.
MR. HALL: But the ducks are…give me your idea of what the situation is with our
ducks.
JOHN: Well, as far as I am concerned, unless something very drastic is done in the next
four or five years, five years at most, our ducks are going to be gone! While our geese are
in good shape now, if the farmers every change their method of harvesting their corn, our
geese are going to be gone. Because they depend on those corn fields for at least eight
percent of their food.
MR. HALL: Describe to me what it was like protecting this Refuge when you were here,
as far as people who violated the game laws.
JOHN: Well, actually, it wasn’t too bad. There were some violations. But most of the
violations occurred in a herd of goats up around Ragged Point. They’d come over and kill
a goat, and say that they had killed a deer. They would take it back and do with it like
they would a deer. There was some waterfowl hunting, but not, I wouldn’t say it was
too much. Back in 1947, I tried to apprehend a couple of fellows. One of them
ambushed me and shot me a couple of times. He went to jail for a while.
MR. HALL: What happened that day?
JOHN: Well, I had had my co-operator, Jim Williams sent me over here the night before.
He went and took the boat back. I was walking up an old road that we had made when I
saw these two men come out of the bushes with a bag over their back. And at about the
same time, they saw me. They dropped the bag, which had ducks in it, and ran back in
the bushes. I followed them until I got in to, I don’t know, maybe three or four hundred
yards, when I was shot. They didn’t come back to the boat that they had used to come
over in. They went over to the cove there were some people working on oyster and clam
beds and they had gotten those people to take them back to Chincoteague. I waited until
late in the afternoon for them to come back down to the boat, not knowing that they had
gone down to the cove. At that time a boat came along and picked me up and took me
back to Chincoteague.
MR. HALL: Now, you took two loads? [shot twice]
JOHN: Yeah, two shots.
MR. HALL: How close?
JOHN: Oh, fifteen yards.
MR. HALL: What happened? What transpired when you were shot?
JOHN: Well, it just felt like somebody had just hit me with their fist. That’s all. I had a
Navy foul weather jacket on, which I thick is what saved me. I got hit in the elbow here,
and on this side I’ve got oh, possibly thirty-five or forty shots still in there.
MR. HALL: It got you in the face too, didn’t it?
JOHN: Yeah. One hit here, and between my eyes and in my ears, and one up here.
MR. HALL: Did you go down?
JOHN: Yeah, I dropped, yeah!
MR. HALL: What did you do then?
JOHN: Well, there wasn’t much I could do except go back and wait at their boat.
MR. HALL: You weren’t concerned about your life?
JOHN: No, I didn’t feel that I had been shot too bad. When I took my jacket off and
shook it, like that, and shot rattled out of it just like beans in a kettle.
MR. HALL: I notice yesterday, you talked to Walter Clark, the guy that shot you. Over
the years have things settled down, as far as….?
JOHN: Well, yes and no. It’s one of those things that with the job, you’ve got to take a
certain number of chances. And there’s no need for me to be sore because somebody tried
to do something to me to protect themselves. So, you just have to let bygones be
bygones.
MR. HALL: It seems to me John, there is a definite difference in attitude on this island
as it relates to Fish and Wildlife agents and protection, as it was in the old days. Because
what I am told, is that there was a certain amount of resentment when the government
took this island.
JOHN: Yes, oh yes.
MR. HALL: And the people felt that they had a right to come back, and that is what
they were doing. They were back and getting them ducks, or deer, or whatever. But as
time has done on, they’ve realized, every one of them, including Walt Clark, says that the
best thing that ever happened was when the government got this land because it would be
developed and destroyed.
JOHN: Well, when I drove down here in 1939, the island was in what you might say an
economical disaster. Everybody lived off of the water. There was no businesses of any
kind on here. And everybody lived on the water. These people had done it so long that
they figured that God put the birds here and they were going to take them when they got
good and ready, when they wanted to and as many as they wanted to. There wasn’t any
SOB’s coming in here and telling them that they couldn’t. But when the second World
War started, the Navy put in an auxiliary Air Base over on the mainland. A lot of the
boys were drafted from here and were sent to other parts of the country where they met
girls off the island. Some of them married girls that were away from home and brought
them back. The fellows that were sent to the Naval Station met the girls over on the
island, and some of them married. Some of them stayed here, and some moved back to
their own homes. I think that was the main starting of the change in attitude. I brought in
new blood, new ideas, new attitudes, and since the Refuge has had a bridge, there have
been a lot of new people come in from other parts of the country. It has changed the
attitude by at least seventy-five percent. Twenty-five years ago Chincoteaguers going
across the causeway would see a person standing along the road with a pair of binoculars
and they’d say, “Look at that damn fool standing out there, watching something!” Now,
they’ve found that about half of their livelihood, especially the motels and restaurants,
come from those same people! Their attitude towards birdwatchers has changes entirely.
They would like to develop the island, yes, but I don’t see how they are going to do it
right now at the present time, and under the present regulations.
MR. HALL: It seems to me John, that the guys who were the worst violators in terms of
shooting too many ducks, or selling them, seem to be the ones who are most concerned
with conserving the ducks today.
JOHN: That’s true. Well, you take, can I name names?
MR. HALL: Sure.
JOHN: Tom Reed used to be one of the main violators. Cigar Daisey. And at the
present time, their attitude is changed to directly opposite of what it was then. They
knew at that time that they had to take ducks and market them to make a living. Which I
agreed with. And at that time, we made our greatest effort on the trapping and marketing
of ducks. If somebody went out and maybe killed a duck for maybe Sunday dinner they
didn’t make too much of an effort to try to catch him. Because we knew that he needed
that meat for his living. On the other hand, if we decided that somebody was killing and
selling ducks, then we went after him. The first case that I made when I was transferred
down here was a duck trapper that we caught up on Ragged Point, on the part of the
Refuge. He was one of those that the government couldn’t tell him what to do. He was
just too smart for the wardens. They couldn’t catch “ST”. But we caught him anyway,
and gave him a little ride down to Norfolk to the Commissioner’s Office. It’s been a fight.
First when they get the trappers, and take them in to court, they’d be fined twenty-five,
fifty, or maybe a hundred dollars. If they didn’t have the money, they always had friends
that they could barrow money from to pay the fine. Then they pay them back with
ducks. But we finally got around to talking to the judges and persuaded them to give
them little jail sentences. Boy, I’m telling you, that made a difference! When a judge said,
sixty day, ninety days, or a hundred and eighty days in jail, there wasn’t anybody that
they could persuade to sit in jail for them! Now, they could barrow money for the fine,
but they couldn’t fine somebody that wanted to sit in jail for them! Then, when the
traffic in wildlife was made a felony that put the cap on it. We don’t find one trap a year
down in the Virginia part of the peninsula.
MR. HALL: It’s just about stopped it.
JOHN: It’s just about stopped the market traffic.
MR. HALL: Now, let’s talk about what went on with the sport hunting. There’s been a
war ever since 1900 against market hunting, and as you said, we’ve done a pretty good
job of stopping duck market hunting. How do you see the compliance level with sport
hunting?
JOHN: Well, there’s a couple of ways of looking at it. This peninsula is one of the
birthplaces, I guess, in the United States as far as waterfowl violations is concerned,
particularly on baiting. You kind find bait anywhere along this peninsula wherever
there’s ducks or geese. Not so much down here, as it is up in Maryland and Delaware.
That is an economic windfall for a lot of the farmers particularly in the Eastern Shore of
Maryland. Some of those farms are rented out to professional guides, and maybe the
owner will take care of the guiding. I’ve known of cases where on a good shooting day a
guide would fill at least one blind six of eight times. He’d make sure that when they got
their limit, they got out of the blind and put another batch in there. A lot of times when
you get along of goose hunters they didn’t stop at the limit. Consequently, it was quite a
slaughter at times. We had one landowner up around Chestertown, Maryland; he was
quite an entrepreneur. He took out hunting parties, he took out fishing parties and he had
horseback rides on his property. He had a huge farm. We got information that he was
trapping geese you use as live decoys. So, we set him up one day and caught his manager
and one of his helpers. They paid something like eighteen hundred dollars for trapping
two geese. That’s what was in the trap when we saw them. We seized the geese that he
had in his pen. They were geese that he had trapped. You could tell that they were birds
that he had trapped because they had the pinion chopped off of the wing. Some of those
were all healed up, and some were right raw that had just been done.
MR. HALL: What do you think had to be done today, to have a better level of
compliance with the hunters?
JOHN: Well you’ve just got to convince them that unless they change their tactics, they
are going to be out of hunting in a few years. Frankly, I think there is possibly as much
as a hundred percent of the legal kill, of ducks that are killed illegally. I don’t mean by
organized hunts or anything like that. Of course they take, they go on. But the average
person who goes out hunting; he’ll go out today and won’t get much. May be won’t get
any shooting. And he’ll go another day and he’ll have all kinds of hunting, and he’ll kill
whatever he can that day. Now maybe he won’t get but two or three ducks over the limit
but when you add that up to maybe a million hunters it adds up to a lot of birds.
MR. HALL: Particularly now, it’s more critical, if we can restore the habitat, to have a
breeding population that can actually use the habitat. How do you feel about that?
JOHN: I feel this way. To have wintering habitat, you’ve got to have breeding habitat in
the summer. And that is really going fast. For instance, during this past drought, a lot of
potholes and sloughs and stuff like that in the main breeding grounds of Canada and the
north central United States dried up. The farmers took advantage of it and ploughed in
up. Most times, they will never be replaced. Even under the most favorable conditions,
it will take five to ten years for one of those ponds to come back.
MR. HALL: And don’t we have to be concerned about having enough breeding birds if it
does come back?
JOHN: That’s true! And if you don’t have the breeding birds it doesn’t make any
difference how much breeding habitat you’ve got. The only way I can see…
[Mr. Hall stops take to put in a new battery]
JOHN: …like Tom Reed and Cigar Daisey have made a complete about face. They are
now all for conservation. They realize that what they had been doing was wrong at the
time, but they had no other way of making a living and consequently, they did it. It was a
question of survival.
MR. HALL: I want you to go real quickly over the fact that what happened that day
when you were patrolling over here about coming up on these subjects and when you get
ready to name the subject that shot you, I want you to say that “Walter Clark, the guy
that shot me was later arrested and convicted.” Whatever you want to say. You had been
dropped off the night before of the island and you patrolled, and found this.
JOHN: Well, I had information that certain people were hunting waterfowl on the refuge.
I had let it be known that I would be out of town for a few days. I had the other agent
down here, Jim Williams, put me on Assateague. Then he took the boat away. I stayed
over all night and the next morning I was walking up a road that we had made and I saw
two men come out of the bushes. One man had a bag over his shoulder that I later found
had ducks in it. They both saw me and dropped the bag. They ran back in the bushes. I
went after them and about two or three hundred yards. One of the men, Walter Clark,
stopped and fired two shots at me from about the distance of fifteen yards. At that time,
I had blood in my eyes and so forth, and I couldn’t see too well. So, I gave up the chase.
I waited to see if they would come back to their boat. But the didn’t. So I finally got a
ride back to Chincoteague. Clark was later picked, tried in Federal Court, in Norfolk, and
convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He spent some time in jail.
MR. HALL: Even with something that drastic, it seems that he harbors no ill will to you
at all. He says he doesn’t.
JOHN: Apparently not.
MR. HALL: I guess you could say that time apparently repairs a lot.
JOHN: Well, it’s been forty-two years since that happened. Time kind of has a habit of
erasing a lot of things. I personally have no animosity towards Clark. And from what I
understand, he doesn’t have any animosity toward me. So that’s the way things are at
the present time.
MR. HALL: How do you feel? I’ve talked to a lot of people on this island when I left
here twenty-five years ago, but you have among one of the most outstanding reputations
of any person that ever lived in this area, and you were a Game Warden. Can you relate
those two things, from the years when it was tough to the present? How did you end up
that way?
JOHN: When I came on here, I came down here with the intention of enforcing the law to
the best of my ability. And I determined that it wouldn’t make any difference to me
whether a man didn’t have five cents in his pocket, or if he had five millions dollars. If he
was a violator, I’d catch him if I could! That was well known, and consequently there
were people who didn’t like me, but they respected me. I think it’s pretty much the
same way now, since I have moved back down here.
MR. HALL: It’s obvious that you feel very comfortable in this community.
JOHN: Oh Yeah!
MR. HALL: And it’s obvious that you are well respected. What’s the combination
there, John? This was probably one of the toughest areas in the country. The record
speaks for itself. There was probably more Game Wardens “salted” on Chincoteague
Island that any one place in America. Now, they all, and I think they are sincere, they
respected what you did then, and your continuing interest in trying to do what’s right for
the birds. That seems to impress everyone.
JOHN: Well, as far as I can see, that’s about the way it goes. I’ve been banding birds
now, since 1927, which will be sixty-two years in May. In that time, I have banded a
good number of birds. And a good many of them have been banded down here.
Generally, colonial nesting birds like the Skimmers, Terns and Gulls. A lot of people got
to see where they’d recognize me when I am out on the marsh. They’d toot their horns
and wave their hands and things like that, which I think shows a certain amount of
respect.
MR. HALL: It seemed like to me that the Agents in the old days were in the field more
than maybe we are today. I’ve been in the field a lot myself. I feel like with as few
Agents as we have, we have a real responsibility of selling ourselves first.
JOHN: That’s true.
MR. HALL: ..and what we stand for. How do you feel about that?
JOHN: I feel the same way. Personally, I have stayed out in the marsh over three nights.
I mean you were in a position where during the day, you could not raise your head above
the grass, working on some of the duck trappers. Sometimes we caught then, sometimes
we didn’t. It was a pretty rough and tough proposition. You were out there. You didn’t
know when you were going to get off. It was freezing cold weather. It was very, very
uncomfortable. And I think at the present time, I am getting some of the results of it in
the way my legs are working. I just can’t do the walking that I used to do.
MR. HALL: Part of this is that Cigar Daisey is going to go over to this international
Ducks Unlimited Symposium. If you were going to give a message to the people in
Ducks Unlimited today, what would you say to them?
JOHN: I would say to work for closure of the duck-hunting season for at least five years.
That is the only way that they are ever going to get the birds back. I think they’ve got a
goal of one hundred million birds, of ducks by 2000. If they don’t close the season,
they’re not going to have fifty million because the birds are going down so fast. I would
say that they should keep up their work, and not only spend their money in Canada. But
they should spend the money in the United States to a great extent.
MR. HALL: Using the words ‘Ducks Unlimited’, it sounds like you are saying, “I think
that Ducks Unlimited, in addition to the habitat”, what would you say to them about
ethics, hunting ethics. In other words, Ducks Unlimited in addition to habitat, what do
you say about ethics?
JOHN: Well, I think that they could clean up a lot of violations if they would police their
membership to a better extent. I have heard, and have no way to prove it, but they go to
Canada and shoot over the bag limits. They go to Mexico and they kill a lot of birds. By
showing a sort of indifference to the overall picture, they are not making a very good
impression on the other hunters. That’s my opinion.
MR. HALL: Do you have any comment, do you believe that if duck hunting is saved, the
major responsibility will financially and otherwise, be the duck hunters?
JOHN: Yes. I do. They should pay for it.
MR. HALL: You say that in your words.
JOHN: If we are going to save the resource, in my opinion, we are going to have to have a
closed season for at least five years. Now, I know that that is going to raise a lot of
political hassle. It’s going to raise a lot of opposition from the States, because they feel
that something like that is going to loose a certain amount of revenues. It’s the same way
with the Fish and Wildlife Service. They would loose a lot of duck stamp sales. But if
they don’t have the birds, why spend money on buying wetlands? You can’t have one
without the other.
MR. HALL: Do you think that the duck hunters will be the major group that will be
responsible for saving wetlands? And by doing so, saving duck hunting if it can be saved?
JOHN: Well, I don’t say that they are going to be the major one but they are going to
have a high responsibility. They are getting a lot of outside organizations now that are
really interested in wetlands. Those people are going to work as much as they can. And I
think it’s up to the duck hunters to assist them in what they are trying to do. As an
example, from Ocean City, north to above Rehoboth, used to be one of the prime black
duck hunting areas along the peninsula. Now you haven’t got a thing up there for
waterfowl. All you’ve got is condominiums and motels and things like that. Now, I
realize that you’ve got to depend on development and stuff like that but, development
can be done without destroying the wetlands. And I think it’s up to Ducks Unlimited
and other organizations to convince developers that they shouldn’t do things like that,
and if they persist; to see that there are laws that prevent them from doing it.
MR. HALL: In addition, what should Ducks Unlimited do with their members about
obeying the laws?
JOHN: Well, to begin with, as I say, police their membership better than they are. I
think that if some of the members are caught in violations that they should be expelled
from the organization. Of course, there again, you run into the money proposition.
MR. HALL: In your years of working as a Law Enforcement Agent, give me your
estimation of how many so called sportsmen that you saw that would shoot over the
limit or disobey the waterfowl regulations?
JOHN: Well, I would say that eight-five percent of your average hunter will break the
law in some way, at some time. Now, we had what we called a “spy blind”. Do you
remember that? I was really surprised.
MR. HALL: You saw that?
JOHN: I saw it. I am not estimating at all. I am going by what I saw. At that time I was
up in New York. Seneca Lake was one of the prime waterfowl hunting areas in my part
of the State. I have watched so called “good hunters”, shoot their limit, come ashore, hide
the birds and go back; shoot another limit and come back and hide the birds.
MR. HALL: Do you think that this is a social problem where there has been very little
negative peer pressure exerted on duck hunters from their peers to obey the law?
JOHN: I think that’s about in a class with the automobile driver speeding. The law is
there, but you ride by yourself; you don’t think there is anybody around, so you take the
chance. I don’t think there has been any amount of so-called peer pressure to reduce it.
They go out and they hunt and they come back with birds and they talk with the
neighbors, “Well, I had a good day today. It was a good shoot, want some?” That’s the
way it goes.
MR. HALL: I agree. Tell me about how you feel today.
JOHN: Well today, I feel like all of the State Game Wardens, all the Federal Game
Wardens, all of the Audubon societies and the people that vote on Washington stuff; if
they don’t get behind them draining the wetlands and over-killing the fowl, they ain’t
going to have no birds! That’s it. And just like I told you, in all of this bent grass we call
it, the saw grass, at this time of the years a few years back, there would have been a pair
of black ducks or a pair of little mallards in every little pond. Later on, the gander, he
nests later on, like May,